


Tower Rats

by Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers & J'onn J'onzz Space Family, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/F, Forbidden Love, Hurt/Comfort, Maggie Sawyer & James Olsen Friendship, Minor Kara Danvers/Jimmy Olsen, No aliens but Kara is still superhuman, Slow Burn Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-10-31 23:29:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 88,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10909665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: A river separates two nations that have been at war for as long as anyone can remember. A bridge across that river is a no-man's-land, inhabited for generations by exiles and refugees of both nations, and by their descendants. The people who live on the bridge cannot set foot on the land on either side for fear of being taken for an enemy combatant and shot, so people are born, live, and die on the bridge without ever stepping on solid ground.The bridge is governed by four clans. Alex Danvers and her family have never pledged allegiance to any of them, but Maggie and James grew up in one. Maggie and Alex should really never have met. They should never have had the chance to become friends.But they fall in love anyway.(This fic is fully written, and I'll be trickling out the chapters as I have time to edit and format them.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long-form fic, so it'll take a couple chapters for Sanvers to kick off. I hope you'll bear with me as the Alex & Kara & J'onn family relationship, which is more forgrounded in these earlier chapters, is really just as central to this story as the Maggie/Alex romance.
> 
> Some blood and violence. I don't think it's severe enough to warrant the major archive warnings, but I'll flag the appropriate chapters as they come up. If you could handle that credit-card close-up in 2x19, I think you'll be fine with anything in here. **Some blood in Chapter 1.**
> 
> This idea originated as an AU based on William Gibson's _All Tomorrow's Parties._ The only part of that idea that I retained was the concept of people living on a bridge--literally everything else is different--but I sprinkled nods to the book throughout anyway.
> 
> I have proofread this thing myself, so if you notice any issues (or if the time-jumping in the first few chapters is hard to follow), please feel free to let me know.

When Alex saw her for the first time, the girl was thin and wiry and not-quite-fully-grown, just as Alex herself was thin and wiry and not-quite-fully-grown. Alex stopped halfway down the tower to watch her as she adjusted her harness and threw one leg, then the other, over the railing and paused. She held there a moment, toes on the ground and heels over air and hands gripping the railing tightly, and then took a breath and, with the kind of jerky movement that accompanies bursts of nervous resolve, dropped her body backward into her harness. The harness swung a little but caught her, and she sat there, feet still braced up on the ledge, ass hanging over hundreds of feet of empty air above the dark water below.

Even from here, far up and away, Alex could see the tension in the girl’s shoulders and arms. Her hands were wrapped around her harness rope, and Alex imagined the knuckles of her olive skin whitening.

Beside her, a man settled back into his harness, much more relaxed. He said something to the girl and she nodded, rolled her neck and shoulders and forced her body to loosen, shaking black hair back over her shoulders. One nervous hand released the rope to pat at the empty water pouch at her hip, clipped to her harness. The large green patch on the pouch marked the girl as Armistice.

The man nodded, rhythmically, counting three, two, one--

Together, they pushed off, hurtling from the ledge toward the water below.

 

\--

 

She remembered the first day she saw the girl because it was also the first day she saw Kara, and the first day she saw Kara was the day her life shifted course incorrigibly.

Alex and her parents lived far up a bridge tower close to Windside. Alex stopped watching the water-drop girl and finished her climb down to be met with shouting and anguish from the Windside end. People were moving toward the noise and she slipped into the flow, following it to its end and then ducking and weaving her way to the front of the crowd. She found her parents there, their toes right at the line where the pavement of the Bridge met the grass of the no-man’s-land between the Bridge and the Windside barrier gate.

Between the end of the Bridge and the Windside gate was mostly grass, though if you looked carefully, you could see where the pavement of the Bridge might have continued onward through the gate, a long time ago. There had been a road there, once, J’onn had explained to her: a hard path for vehicles to travel from one place to another. Long ago, J’onn said, the Bridge had not been a place where anyone lived--it was just a pathway to get from one place to another, over the water.

Alex had a hard time imagining a bridge with nobody living on it. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed it.

But that day, that empty expanse of grass was not empty: a short distance toward them from the gate, in the shorter grass, was… someone, kneeling. And even from here, Alex could tell that the marks on the person’s arms, the streaks down the knees and in the hair, were all blood.

“Eliza,” her father said, “Eliza, that’s a kid. That’s a little girl.”

Conversation grew slowly around them, a quiet buzz climbing into a loud din. Were Windsiders so barbaric they’d abandon a bleeding child in the neutral zone? Maybe it wasn’t abandonment, maybe it was quarantine--why was she bleeding like that? Could she be contagious? Could she be a human disease weapon, finally sent to exterminate the Bridge people, once and for all?

The Windside gate had a watchtower on each side and Alex could see the guards up there, speaking animatedly to one another. The mounted machine guns pointed toward the Bridge as they always did, with guards at each of them, but they hung limply; they were not engaged.

Alex looked up at her mother. “I don’t think they know what’s going on with her, either.”

“I think you’re right, sweetheart,” her mother said. Then: “Jer. Give me your shirt.”

“Eliza, you can’t possibly--”

“Give me your shirt, Jeremiah.”

He sighed, and shucked it over his head.

The shirt had been white, once, and while it was not any longer, it was recognizable for the color it had been. Alex’s mother took a deep breath and held the shirt above her head, the wind moving it gently, and she stepped into the grass.

Another step. And another. The Windsiders did not shoot.

Step, after step, after step, until she reached the girl and knelt down in front of her.  Alex imagined they must be speaking. And then her mother stood up, and the girl stood up--

And promptly swayed to the side, consciousness stuttering and failing, kept from falling only by Alex’s mother’s quick hands.

Alex’s father, then, was the one who ran into the grass, bare-chested with both arms stretched up above his head, to catch the girl from where she was half-propped against Mother’s body, He scooped her up into his arms, and Mother held the shirt--now stained with the girl’s blood--in the air, and they walked back to the Bridge.

When they came close, Alex could see that the girl was bleeding from everywhere: her ears, her nose, her eyes, from her arms and legs. The crowd of people parted as they approached, packing hard up against each other to avoid the slightest contact with the child.

“You damned Unaligned don’t know what you’re doing,” yelled one man with a red Redsun rag tied over his head.

“Bet you’re trying to exterminate us all with disease,” yelled a woman. Her blue armband marked her as Current.

“You want to get rid of all the Clans, don’t you?” yelled an Armistice with a green bandana around his neck.

“‘Unaligned,’ my ass,” murmured a Risen, arms crossed below the yellow patch on her vest, “you’re just in it for yourselves.”

Crowds parted before them all the way to their clinic: a room, dark and metal, at the base of the tower where they lived. Alex knew, without being asked, to pull a clean cover-sheet from the bin and spread it over the mat on the side, and her father laid the girl there.

“If you get started, I’ll go pick up more water,” her father said, and her mother nodded, and Alex knew the next step, too: to fill a pan with the remaining water from the ten-gallon pouch hanging on the wall and to set it on the stove in the corner to warm. Her mother checked the girl’s pulse, and felt her temperature (“warm, but not dangerously so,” she muttered quietly), and looked at her fingernails and her tongue and her palms, and in her ears and her nose, and pulled back her closed eyelids to check her eyes. She swabbed blood and saliva and mucus onto slides and set them aside.

When the water was hot, Alex brought the pan to her mother’s side. She helped her mother pull the girl’s bloodied clothing away--she had seen enough naked bodies in her parents’ clinic over the years to find them all unremarkable--and then helped her to wipe away the blood. Alex covered the girl with another clean sheet.

“There’s nothing obviously wrong with her that I can tell,” her mother said when her father came back, as he replaced the empty pouch on the wall with the full one. “Check her and see if you find anything I missed? I’m going to look at these slides.”

Her father checked the girl, just as her mother had. Like her mother, he said, “She’s running a little hot, but nothing serious.”

“Alex,” her mother said suddenly, sharply, from the microscope,. “Would you go up and send J’onn down? And find some clothes for her, while you’re there?”

Alex’s mother was bent over her microscope, looking at one of the slides. Her back was to the room but  Alex recognized the tension in her shoulders for what it was. She looked over at her father and could tell that he recognized it, too. He nodded gently. “Go.”

Up the ropes, the ladders, the lifts and crossings Alex climbed, all the way to the top of the tower and to the padlock on the door to their home. She fetched the clothes, first -- worn, soft pants and a shirt that she’d come close to outgrowing, and some thick knit socks for good measure -- and then slipped out the door and knocked on J’onn’s next door. He followed her down to the clinic.

Mother and Father had their heads tucked together near the microscope, speaking softly, but they looked up when J’onn cleared his throat.

“J’onn,” her father said, in a rush, “we need your help. This girl came from Windside, but maybe you had something similar on Leeside, or knew something of this kind of project?”

J’onn went to the corner and they spoke in hushed voices. Alex took the clothes over to where the girl lay still on the mat, but she kept her ears tuned to the things her parents were saying. She couldn’t hear much -- they were whispering, and the clinic’s corrugated metal walls did little to block out the constant din of the Bridge -- but she caught words, syllables, phrases: genetically modified platelet shape. Accelerated healing. What else. Never. Experiment.

Alex pulled the sheet up far enough to slide one sock onto the girl’s feet, and then the other. She bunched up the pants and slipped one foot through, and then the other, and with a series of lifts and tugs was able to pull them up, drawstring tied snugly around the girl’s waist.

The shirt was the trigger.

Alex was kneeling behind the girl’s head and tried to lift it up, to prop her up against her knees to start sliding the shirt over her head, when the girl woke up.

When she woke up her eyes opened.

When her eyes opened, fire shot out of them and incinerated a hole into the clinic’s corrugated metal roof.

The girl screamed.

Alex screamed.

The adults in the corner whipped around.

The girl was flailing now, eyes closed but arms swinging, and Alex tried to subdue her, to wrap her arms around the erratically-jerking limbs but they’d pushed back at her with a force greater than even J’onn had ever done, and Alex was thrown back hard, her fall broken by the stack of clean sheets behind her. The girl yelled things, screamed at them in a language Alex could not understand, and her parents’ attempts at soothing words in the Bridge language didn’t seem to have any effect. It was J’onn, finally, who dove forward and lay down beside her, who said words in the girl’s language and was able to calm her down.

J’onn’s words were a question, Alex could tell.

The girl’s breath settled gradually, and then:

“Kara,” she said, very quietly, so only J’onn and Alex were close enough to hear.

“Her name is Kara,” J’onn said to the room.

He continued to speak quietly to her, and slowly. Alex could tell, just by listening, that he didn’t speak that language well. And she was able to recognize five words that he said: Alex, Jeremiah, Eliza, J’onn, and Bridge.

Kara’s brow furrowed over her tightly-clenched eyes, and then she said, slowly, in Alex’s language: “I be… at… Bridge. You be… Bridge people.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Alex’s mother said, slowly. “We’re not going to hurt you, Kara. You’re safe here.”

J’onn carefully backed away and let Mother kneel down in his place. She slipped her hand into Kara’s, and only then did Alex notice that Kara was shaking -- her tremors shook Mother’s arm all the way to the shoulder.

“Why don’t you try to open your eyes again, Kara, dear,” said Alex’s mother, quietly.

“Eliza--”

“They were open when I met her in the field, Jeremiah. I think it was a fear response engaging with whatever genetic and physical alterations have been done to her.” She leaned forward, placed a hand gently on Kara’s near shoulder, and encouraged her to roll onto her side, facing away. “There,” she said, “You can’t hurt anyone now. There’s nothing but air and the River on the other side of that wall.”

Alex could see as the girl tensed, then relaxed. She had opened her eyes. Slowly, carefully, she rolled back over to face the room, and Alex had never seen eyes so blue.

“You look… strange,” she said, brokenly. “I see your… mind.”

“You can read our thoughts?”Jeremiah said, nervousness carefully subdued in his voice.

But Kara shook her head. “Not thoughts. Your… mind. Brain.”

“You see our brains,” Jeremiah said.

Kara nodded. “And… bones.”

Alex watched her parents eyes lock. Then her father turned and locked eyes with J’onn, who shrugged, as if to say, _I have no idea either._

Alex crawled closer. This time, Kara didn’t flinch or panic when Alex touched her shoulder.

Alex knew a lot about being lonely. She’d never had many friends because her family was Unaligned. The Clans tended to keep to themselves, and there were few Unaligned on the Bridge, anywhere.

“I’m Alex,” she said, “and I’m going to be your friend.”

For the first time, Kara smiled.

 

\--

 

After noticing the dark-haired girl at the water drop that first time, Alex noticed her all the time. On that first drop down to the river, Alex had watched her reach down, carefully, with her empty one-gallon water pouch, watched her fill it with water from the River, and then watched her struggle her way back up the rope, burdened with the extra gallon of weight, gangly teenage arms and legs struggling to find balance in the harness. “Gangly teenager” was how J’onn described Alex those days when they would spar on top of the tower, and watching this girl, Alex could see why: she wasn’t flailing, exactly, but she kept overcorrecting, as though she didn’t understand her own weight and reach.

Alex was pretty sure, watching her, that if she were to fight this girl, she’d win. J’onn had been teaching her to understand how the parts of her body worked together, to understand their balance and mechanics, gangly teenager or not, so she could defend herself when other kids on the Bridge bullied her for not having a Clan..

But then, this dark-haired girl was apprenticed to the water drop, apparently. She might win on nerve and scrap alone.

 

\--

 

Alex was born on this bridge, as were her parents, and their parents. She didn’t know how long ago her ancestors came here from the land. She didn’t know if they were Leesiders or Windsiders, if they were refugees or exiles, driven by force or by choice. Her family’s stories didn’t go back far enough.

By the time she reached adulthood, she was the only one left of her family, so any history she never learned was lost for good.

J’onn was a Leesider. He’d come running to the Bridge chased by a hail of bullets from the Leeside watchtowers, screaming “Sanctuary!” in the language of the Bridge, and waving a scrap of white fabric in one raised hand. Alex had seen the bullet that struck him in the calf, the spurt of blood that rushed out, and when he stumbled onto the bridge he fell to his knees, pressing the fabric that had served as his white peace flag to the wound, begging “Please, help me. I beg the sanctuary of the Bridge.”

Alex had been young--barely old enough to remember. She remembered her parents packing his wound and she remembered the long, slow walk from Leeside to the clinic. The Clans had stared at him, puzzled and not speaking. That night, she packed items for dinner from their home into a sack and carried them down the tower to the clinic for dinner, because J’onn had stitches in his calf and couldn’t make the climb up, but he also had nowhere else to go.

Her parents explained the Clans to him, how there were four of them and each Clan controlled different territory on the Bridge. They left each other alone, mostly, though violent confrontations between enforcers of different Clans happened every few weeks. The Bridge couldn’t function without the Clans, because the Clans had, over generations, developed illicit but strong connections with Leesiders and Windsiders that enabled them to access everything from food to building supplies. The Clans lived in unstable truce: trading with one another as necessary, but suspicious of each other, and not without reason, as everyone knew that any Clan would steal the most valuable assets of any other if given half a chance. And they were all constantly trying to recruit each other’s members to defect. On the rare occasions of success, defectors were often hunted down by their original Clans and thrown over the side of the Bridge.

To have a Clan was to have protection, a network, guaranteed access to medical care from Clan doctors.

“Why do you not have a Clan?” J’onn asked.

Because to have a Clan was to be owned by one.

The Clans controlled all of the Bridge surfaces, both levels: Armistice had Windside Above, Risen had Windside Below, Redsun had Leeside Above, and Current had Leeside Below. But none of them claimed the towers, with their exposure to wind and rain and the demand to climb high, higher, up exposed ladders and ropeways. So the Unaligned were driven up, living high in the towers like Alex and her family.

Alex had lived her entire life with the wind and the rain and the treacherous climb. None of it frightened her.

“You can choose a Clan if you want to,” Father said, to J’onn. “It’s easier, in a lot of ways, to have one.”

J’onn shook his head. “I fled here because I couldn’t abide by what I had to do as a member of my people on land,” he said. “I didn’t come here to sign up to be a soldier in someone else’s army again.”

After dinner, J’onn opened the backpack he’d been carrying.

“I wasn’t able to take much with me when I fled,” he said, “but if there’s anything here you want, please take it as a gift. In thanks for your hospitality.”

He pulled out clothing, a blanket, and then--

“Is that a book?” Her mother asked. J’onn had just pulled a rectangular… something out of his bag.

“I--yes?” J’onn said, and handed it to her. She turned it in her hands slowly, with reverence, and then cracked it in half and ran her fingers over the leaves inside.

“You can read?” She asked.

J’onn blinked at her, confused. “Yes, I can read, of course. That book is in your language, written by someone who traded with Bridge  people. That’s how I learned to speak it.”

Eliza looked up at him. “Reading was lost here, generations ago. Would you -- I think we’re too old to learn something like this, but would you teach Alex?”

J’onn turned; his dark, kind eyes settled on Alex. He smiled. “What do you think? Would you like to learn to read?”

Alex didn’t know what this ‘reading’ was, exactly. But she was intrigued by this Leesider, and the idea of her learning to read, whatever that might be, was clearly something that made her parents happy.

She nodded.

The next morning, she sat down beside J’onn in the clinic, where he had spent the night. He opened a book between them and began to teach her the letters.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl tipped her head. “Fair enough.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Maggie, by the way. Sawyer.”
> 
> Her palm, against Alex’s, was warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a brief discussion in this chapter of the blood that appeared in the last chapter.

Here is the story of the Bridge:

The people of Leeside and Windside had been at war for as long as anyone could remember.

The Bridge had existed since even before the war. The story goes that when the two armies conquered to the edge of the water, they struck an agreement to stop there. Each side owned the land up to its bank of the River, and the Bridge would remain neutral, a no-man’s-land. Any Leesider who stepped off the bridge on the Windside could be shot by the Windsiders. Any Windsider who stepped off the bridge on the Leeside could be shot by the Leesiders. 

But there was no agreement in place about shooting anyone on the Bridge itself.  And so the Bridge became an unlikely refuge for people fleeing the war.

At first, charitable groups from both Leeside and Windside would leave drops of food and supplies at the foot of their side of the bridge, and the Bridge people, careful not to set foot off the concrete of the Bridge itself, would collect the donations. They built homes from the packaging materials and ate the donated food and clothed themselves in donated clothing. And life on the Bridge became stable, became almost pleasant.

But as one generation of Bridge people turned into two, and into four, the Leesiders and Windsiders realized it had become impossible to tell which side any Bridge person came from. 

So they walled themselves off from the Bridge, and installed turrets on both sides. Their own people were no longer permitted to drop donations. And any person who stepped off the bridge was deemed suspect and eligible to be shot on sight.

Without the donations, they assumed the Bridge people would slowly die out. 

But generations of refugees are nothing if not resilient. They organized themselves into four groups, each tasked with solving an urgent problem. Armistice developed the water drop: a system of rappelling off the side of the Bridge and climb back up with large containers of water, and they learned to purify the water for drinking. Current built hydropower generators. Redsun built solar generators. And Risen found back-channel access to Leesiders and Windsiders who continued to funnel donated supplies to the Bridge in exchange for everything from intelligence about the other side to refuge on the bridge for family and friends who had become unsafe on the land. 

Over time the Clans came to resent the interdependence of their groups. Current disliked depending on Armistice for water, and Armistice disliked depending on Risen for food, and so on. Redsun began to build hydro generators for periods without sun, and Current began to build solar generators for periods when the river was slow. Armistice developed its own illicit off-Bridge supply networks. Risen trained its own people to drop water. Until all the Clans were doing all the same things, but in different areas on the Bridge, in tense parallel to one another. They traded with one another out of necessity; if a Clan was low on water its members would buy it from another Clan, or if a generator went down they’d buy power until it could be fixed. Each Clan developed its own currency, coins crudely cut from scrap metal, which they used to trade and to balance ledgers between one another.

Alex’s family traded the services of their clinic for anything they needed. The value of their service fluctuated based on the season, the weather, the capacities of the Clans’ own medical facilities, and whether or not there happened to be some new virus circulating on the Bridge. When their services were needed, they could trade a single day of care for chits enough to buy a week’s worth of electricity. When needs were low, the promise of a week of care for two patients might only get them chits for twenty gallons of water. 

This might be part of the reason that so many of the Clans hated the Unaligned: often, the Unaligned benefited from the Clan members’ struggles. 

Alex knew her ancestors must have come to the Bridge after the Clans had diversified their labors, because the earliest arrivals would all have had a Clan out of necessity. Her ancestors, she imagined, opted out of the Clans because they didn’t want to align themselves to a faction that was always on the verge of a new war.

 

\--

 

J’onn didn't only teach Alex to read, of course.

He built himself a home in the tower, right next to theirs, and became, very quickly, an extension of the Danvers family. They took meals together, most of the time. J’onn bartered his knowledge of Leeside, of their resources and connections and languages, for chits he spent on food and water that he shared with Alex’s family, and Alex’s family bartered their clinic services for their own supplies that they shared with J’onn. He was good with electronics, had a knack for fixing things, and so he traded that skill, too.

Alex was ten when she came home with a black eye and a bloodied lip and a swollen wrist and empty-handed of the water her parents had sent her to barter from Current.

She’d gotten the water, she said, but then two kids from Redsun -- a boy and a girl, a little older than her -- had stolen it from her. She’d tried to stop them. Truly she had. But they’d called her a tower rat and there had been two of them. What could she do?

The next day, J’onn took her up above the roofs of their homes, to the very top of the tower. He had rigged belt harnesses to overhead safety lines, and clipped them each into one.

“Come stand beside me, Alex,” he said, “I’m going to teach you how to protect yourself.”

And that was how Alex began to learn to fight.

 

\--

 

As months, and then years passed, Alex watched the Armistice girl with the black hair as she progressed from that slow, awkward climb with the one-gallon pouch to a confident, steady climb with a five-gallon pouch to a smooth, fast, gecko-like climb with ten gallons of water hanging from her harness. At the top, she’d toss her full pouches over the railing and take another clip of empties from a girl with a green Armistice headband and then jump into the drop again.

Alex progressed too, in her training on top of the tower. She told J’onn she wanted to begin training off the line. 

“Absolutely not,” J’onn said, at first. “I haven’t spent years teaching you self defense to lose you because you fall five hundred feet off this tower.”

“If I ever need to use the self defense you’ve taught me, J’onn, I probably won’t be tied to a safety rope when it happens.”

Kara sat with them on the tower, as she usually did during Alex and J’onn’s training sessions. It was the only place she could be outside with one of J’onn’s books without an audience around to look at her suspiciously, to wonder how she knew how to read it.

“I’m right here,” Kara spoke up, “I could catch her if she fell.”

“No!” Alex and J’onn said, as one.

Kara rolled her eyes. “I have all these powers. What use are they if they can’t keep you safe?”

“The last thing we need is anyone from any of the Clans seeing what you can do,” J’onn said, firmly. “They fear anything that’s stronger than them that they can’t control.”

“They can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do,” Kara said. 

“Kara,” Alex replied, “That’s exactly what they fear. And that’s exactly what makes them dangerous.”

 

\--

 

The full extent of Kara’s powers unfurled itself slowly across the first weeks she spent living with the Danvers.

They noticed some physical traits, first. There was her heat-vision, for one thing, which fortunately proved to be as effective for welding a patch onto the hole in the clinic’s ceiling as it had been effective in creating that hole in the first place. Her remarkably fine-tuned hearing manifest next: she could hear conversations happening halfway across the Bridge, it seemed, despite all the Bridge’s constant din of noise. 

Her inhumanly-fast healing was the result of the modified platelets that Alex’s mother had seen under the microscope. They were unable to wound her, her immune response too fast to allow anything to break her skin. Which, Alex’s father said, made all that blood even more questionable.

But the resiliency of her bones manifest next. Alex’s parents borrowed a scanner from Current and determined that they had been reinforced, somehow, with an impenetrable alloy. 

“I can’t imagine what they would have used to cut through her skin -- and they would have had to forcibly keep it open to install the reinforcement,” her mother said. “I bet that’s where the blood came from. The wounds healed faster than the fresh blood could dry or wash away.”

Her father was the one who noticed that Kara’s x-ray vision couldn’t see through the lead paint that still appeared, in patches, on the Bridge’s support cables. So he found some old spectacles and embedded the frames with flakes of the lead paint, scraped off the bridge itself -- just enough to help her moderate her vision. 

She had an uncanny ability to retain and process new information. Within a week, she was conversant in the language of the Bridge. Within two weeks, she spoke it as though she had always lived there.

Kara slept beside Alex. They shared a mat and a blanket, and Alex tried hard not to resent her loss of space and privacy. For two nights, Kara slept with her body as straight and tight as a bridge cable, making herself narrow on the edge of the mat. The third night, the wind picked up, and it whistled along the outer walls of their shelter, it whistled along and across the bridge, and its suspension cables, which passed just over where Kara and Alex laid to sleep, groaned and squealed in response. 

A strong gust of wind howled past them, and Alex felt Kara flinch through the foam bedding they shared.

“Here,” Alex said quietly, turning on to her side to face Kara. Kara looked over at her, red-eyed, and then rolled over to face her. 

Alex tugged one of Kara’s hands (her strong, immovable hands) from under her chin and placed it flat on the floor, above the edge of their sleeping mat.

“Feel how steady that is?” Alex asked.

It was steady. Even the shuddering bursts of wind against their walls didn’t transfer down to the floor. 

Kara nodded.

“That's how safe we are,” Alex said. “We’re as safe as this floor is stable.”

Kara nodded again. Her breath, always a little cold, still shuddered.

Alex bit her lip, and then: “Come here, Kara.” 

She opened her arms toward the sad, shaking girl across from her, and Kara exhaled and collapsed gratefully into them.

Two weeks later, Kara woke Alex in the middle of the night.

“Hmmm?” Alex murmured, blinking into the darkness. “What’s… are you--”

“Shhh,” Kara hushed her. “I want to show you something. Come on. Grab your boots.”

Alex grabbed her jacket from the hook near her head, and took her boots in her hands. Kara carefully drew back the curtain that separated their sleeping area from the shared room; across the way, Alex saw her father’s hand sticking out where her parents’ curtain wasn’t quite drawn all the way across. 

Outside, the evening was cool but not cold, the dark sky clear and full of stars. Alex laced into her boots wordlessly, and then reached for the rope to start climbing down the tower.

“No,” Kara said. “Up.”

Brows furrowed, Alex followed Kara up to the top of the tower, to the training ring. She exhaled sharply and looked out at the familiar view, the River stretching off into the distance, the Leeside and Windside walls, the rolling hills and trees beyond that. 

“Alex,” Kara asked, “Do you trust me?”

Alex blinked at her. “I don’t know yet.”

Kara grinned. Without warning, she reached forward and wrapped her arms around Alex’s body and began sprinting toward the edge of the tower and--

“ _ Kara! _ ”

\--off of it, dropping momentarily into the hundreds of feet of empty space below them, but then leveling off, surging forward and following the River, still hundreds of feet above it.

“Kara,” Alex gasped. Kara held her in a cradle, Alex’s arms around her neck. “Are we--you can--you can  _ fly _ ?”

“Sure seems like it!” Kara grinned. “Hang on a second, let’s make this more comfortable.” Without slowing, she dropped Alex’s knees and swung her around until Alex landed astride Kara’s back. The wind whipped Alex’s face, and when she glanced back over her shoulder, the lights of the bridge--the mile and a half, end to end, where she’d spent every moment of her life up to this point--receded further and further into the darkness.

Kara dove, taking them low until they flirted with the crests of the River waves, and Alex dropped a hand down and dragged her fingers through the water, the spray wetting her sleeve and her face. A hard right and a rise again and they skimmed treetops to the top of an exposed hill where Kara dropped, carefully, to her feet, and set Alex down behind her. 

Alex’s feet settled on the ground and the earth, it  _ gave _ beneath her feet.

“It’s soft,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and watching the way the ground moved, the blades of grass resettled.

Kara looked over her shoulder at her. “It’s grass?” She said, puzzled. 

“I’ve never stepped on grass,” Alex said. She looked up at Kara, now, who smiled at her, gently. “Can I touch it?” Alex asked. 

“Sure,” Kara said, with a tip of her chin, a gentle smile.

Alex crouched down and skimmed her palms over the grass the way she’d skimmed her fingertips over the waves. She couldn’t think of the words for the feeling. It wasn’t soft, exactly, but it wasn’t not-soft, and it wasn’t quite prickly, but it certainly wasn’t smooth. She pressed down, now, her palms molding into the earth. It was cool, and moist, and when she lifted her hands, traces of it had burrowed into the lines and crinkles of her palms.

When they arrived home, whispering and laughing together, both of their parents were sitting up, arms crossed, on the edge of their sleeping mat.

“Do you know what would happen if any of the Clans saw what you could do?” their father growled. 

“Alex,” their mother chastised, “I don’t know how you could let her do this. You have a responsibility, now, as her sister.”

But when they lay back down in bed, that night, Alex couldn’t stop lightly scratching her fingernails across her opposite palms, replicating that slightly tingly, slightly itchy, somewhat soothing feeling of the grass against her skin.

 

\--

 

Alex had seen the dark-haired girl at the water drop hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, before she ever met her.

It happened, finally, one day when the clinic needed water. 

The clinic was theirs--Alex’s and Kara’s, with occasional help from J’onn--since they’d lost their parents. Normally Kara got water for them, but their patient at that moment was a young girl who’d taken an instant liking to Kara and sobbed whenever she stepped more than a few feet away. But they needed plenty of clean water to let her rinse her mouth as Alex tried to clean out and treat her infected tooth. So the girl waited in the clinic with Kara, and Alex grabbed a chit from their box--green, Armistice, because that was what they had most of at the moment--and went to the Armistice water counter.

It was a slow time, late afternoon, so there was no line, no excuse for Alex to second-guess herself or turn around, when she saw that the black-haired girl was behind the counter, one elbow propped on the worn wood, watching a vid stream on the screen mounted to the wall. Behind her, different sizes of water pouch were stacked against the wall like sandbags along the bank of the River.

“You do the water drop,” Alex said, and then instantly wished she could call the words back in embarrassment.  _ You’re not a starry-eyed kid, Danvers _ , she chastised herself.  _ Stupid.  _

The girl looked over and grinned. Her cheeks dimpled and pushed up into the corners of her eyes, half-obscured by the curtain of her dark hair. “I mean, I generally try not to drop it,” she said.

“Yeah--yeah, no, I know, I just--” Alex swallowed and hitched the empty bag higher onto her shoulder. The girl reached for the clicker and turned off the vid and the silence made Alex’s boots echo against the floor as she walked in.

The girl tipped her head and smiled. She was used to this, Alex realized. Of course she was. There was nobody more revered, more admired, more famed and celebrated on the Bridge than someone who did the Drop. Alex imagined that this same dimpled smile made children blush, made teens stutter, made men daydream. 

Alex squared her shoulders. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t some star-struck kid. 

“I’m just surprised to see you work the counter, that’s all,” she said. “I’d think it was beneath you.”

The girl leaned forward, forearms on the counter, and shrugged. “Hurt my shoulder, so I’m helping out here until I recover. So: what can I get you?”

Alex tossed her empty skin onto the counter beside the girl’s elbow, and fished the chit out of her pocket and set it on top. “Five gallons.”

The girl looked down at the skin, and the chit, and then back up at Alex, expression thoughtful. “You’re that doctor, right?” she said. “Danvers.”

Alex nodded. 

“But that’s not all you are,” the girl continued.

Alex blinked. “I don’t follow.” 

With one hand, the girl reached for the chit and slid it across the counter, back toward Alex.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” she said.

Alex looked down at the girl’s fingers, their tips resting against the green chit on the chipped black paint of the countertop. A few inches higher, a green Armistice wristband, and above that, the swollen veins and defined muscles of an athletic forearm, disappearing into the slightly bunched-up cuff of her sleeve.

“Okay,” Alex said, but she did not move to take the chit.

The girl grinned again. “Fight me.”

Alex turned her head in surprise. “What? Why would I--I couldn’t fight you.”

The girl scoffed. “Come on, Danvers, you’re a legend. You and that Leesider with your mad fighting skills, training every day on top of that tower, both Unaligned. We’ve all seen you. The Clan heads all have bounties out for anyone who can convince either of you to join their side.”

“So that’s what you’re after.” Alex exhaled and shook her head. “I won’t join Armistice.”

“I’d be disappointed if you did,” the girl laughed. “It’s nice to see people stand for something on their own, like you do. Most people just stand for whatever their Clan tells them to stand for.”

Her face faltered, ever so slightly, for just a flash, so quick that Alex thought she might have imagined it, but then the grin came back, though with a sadness, a melancholy not there before. 

“I’d be afraid to hurt you,” Alex said.

“In a few days, my shoulder will be healed enough. You’re good enough to spar me without hurting me. And I’m good enough to spar you without hurting you, though I guess you have to take that on faith.”

“What if I lose?”

“You get the water anyway. Outcome of the fight doesn’t matter. I just want to go three rounds and see if I can hold my own against you.”

“And let your Clan leaders see what I can do.”

The girl shrugged. “I can’t stop them from showing up if they want to, but I’m not going to go out of my way to invite them.”

Alex looked down at the empty water bag and at the chit beside it. Things were tight: they’d never fully picked up after she’d lost her parents, because they never had the chance to set up a proper handoff. People were slow to learn to trust that she knew enough to be helpful. And Armistice rarely sent its people to her anyway: they had two medics of their own, so they generally only needed her help if a bad virus swept through or if a bunch of their members got into a Clan fight. 

She could really stand to save that chit for another day.

“Twenty gallons,” the girl offered. “Five now. Fifteen after the fight. I’ll even help you carry it back to your clinic.”

Alex clenched her jaw, swallowed, then reached for the chit and pocketed it. “I won’t fight you at Armistice. Find somewhere neutral.” 

The girl tipped her head. “Fair enough.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Maggie, by the way. Sawyer.”

Her palm, against Alex’s, was warm. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Staring down my calendar for the next few days... probably going to be a week or so before I get the next chapter up. 
> 
> Incidentally, the chapter count on this thing is an estimate. The whole thing is written, but it's all in one loooong (150-page) google doc. I'm breaking it up into chapters as I post, so I'm not totally sure how the math is going to work out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex faced Maggie again in the middle of their makeshift ring.
> 
> “Three rounds,” said James. “Each round ends when one person submits or stays down for a count of five.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly longer chapter this time! 
> 
> Minor character death. The character is canon, the death is not. It has been heavily foreshadowed in the previous chapters, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Kara had been with the Danvers five years when they lost their parents.

Alex was nineteen, and a viral infection was sweeping the Bridge. Alex, her mother, and her father all got sick. J’onn and Kara, who had received far more sophisticated inoculations and immune boosting as children on Land, got nothing more than a sniffle while Alex, her mother, and her father lay side-by-side in their own closed clinic. The three of them took turns narrating care instructions to J’onn and Kara while the other two slept, though Kara, in particular, didn’t seem to need it: the same learning enhancements that had let hear learn their language so quickly had let her learn and process tremendous information about medicine from watching and helping around the clinic, even though she was only fourteen.

Jeremiah, after a few days, began to improve.

Eliza declined steadily. 

Alex showed no measurable change.

At the end of a week, Jeremiah was up and taking care of Alex and Eliza both. Alex, in her moments of lucidity, noticed him fretting over her mother. She noticed when they moved her mother further away in the room. She noticed when he stopped being the one to help her eat and hobble to the toilet, letting Kara help her as he focused exclusively, now, on their mother.

She barely noticed when her mother went away.

Later, much later, when Alex finally pulled through, she was devastated to have missed her mother’s cremation, and her father was gone.

“He couldn’t lose both of you,” Kara said quietly. “He joined a team of traders from Current to see if he could get stronger medicines from Leeside.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“Four days ago.”

“He should be back by now.”

“I know.”

J’onn came into the clinic then, holding a canteen and a bowl. He opened the canteen and filled the bowl with a soup that smelled rich and thick, like he must have used ten chits’ worth of rations to make it.

It was that knowledge only that kept Alex from throwing the soup back into his face. He handed it to her and she set it carefully aside before launching herself at him, throwing fists and claws.

“You should have gone!” She was suddenly sobbing. When had she started crying? She didn't know. But “You should have gone! He doesn’t know anything about  _ Leeside _ . He barely even speaks the language! How could he possibly come back with medicine? And with a team from  _ Current _ ? How could--”

J’onn let her hit him. She was still far too weak to do any damage so he knelt there, in front of her, and didn’t even put up his hands to block her as her fists bounced off his chest, shoulders, thighs. Kara was the one who leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her sister, no super-strength needed to pin Alex’s arms to her torso and pull her back onto her mat.

“Alex, he  _ tried _ ,” Kara whispered. “He offered to go. He begged Dad to let him be the one to go. Dad wouldn’t let him. J’onn is a fugitive on Leeside, he’d have a target on him anywhere he went. He’d never have made it back. He probably never would have made it all the way onto the land.”

A day later, or two days later, Alex would be rational enough, and recovered enough, to realize that her sister was speaking truth. J’onn wouldn’t have been able to go to Leeside and help. It didn’t assuage her anger. A week passed, and then another, without a word from Jeremiah or from the trading party he’d left with. 

Alex became strong enough to leave the clinic and to climb back up the tower. She and Kara slept side by side on their side of the room, curtain drawn across their parents’ empty space. 

Their reserve of chits dwindled. Current blamed Alex and her family for the loss of their trading party, so they refused all but the most lopsided of trades. Alex would trade with the other Clans instead, but eventually her reserves of all but the blue chits were gone. 

J’onn would trade what he could: information, self-defense and fighting skills, and everything he earned went into the Danvers’ pot. But it wasn't enough to keep up.

Kara caught up to Alex one day as she was walking back from Redsun, having spent their last red chit on two days’ ration of food. 

“He’s talking about contracting out to Clan raiding parties,” Kara said, voice hushed.

Alex shrugged. “He sells Leeside intel to raiding and trading parties all the time.”

“No,” Kara whispered harshly. “He's talking about contracting  _ himself _ , about going on expeditions with Clans who will hire him.” 

Alex froze at that. “He wouldn’t.”

“He doesn’t want to, but let’s face it, Alex, we’re desperate. And you didn’t hear him: he swore to Dad that he’d do whatever he had to do to take care of us.”

Alex grit her teeth, clenching her jaw around the taste of fear and rage and resilience. She hefted the water higher on her shoulder and turned wordlessly from Kara, striding away.

“Alex!” Kara cried, jogging to catch up. 

Alex stopped at the door to the clinic and fished in her pocket for the key to the padlock that kept it closed. She hadn’t entered it since she’d been well enough to get herself up to the tower.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked, following her into the room.

Alex set the water pouch near the door and began to gather dirty blankets and towels into a pile to be cleaned and sterilized.

“We’re going to re-open the clinic,” she said. 

“But Alex, without Mom and Dad--”

Alex wheeled on her. “I haven’t learned everything they could teach me. But I’ve learned a lot of it. I’ve learned enough to be able to help a lot of people.”

“You’re nineteen, Alex.”

“And you’re fourteen, and you’re going to help me. You can see things, and hear things, that nobody else can see or hear. We don’t have a scanner, but you’re better than a scanner.”

“I don’t know what to look for.”

“Kara,” Alex stepped forward and placed her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “You’ll learn. You’ll learn unbelievably quickly, because that’s what you  _ do _ .” She stepped back then and offered a hand. “What do you say? Danvers sisters, together, saving the day?”

Kara looked at Alex’s outstretched hand and sighed. She took it. “Okay.”

  


\--

  


When J’onn came home, that night, Alex and Kara had already made dinner and were waiting for him in his home.

“How are you feeling today, Alex?” he asked, even though she’d been well for weeks, because they hadn’t really talked in all those weeks since Alex had yelled at him for letting her father leave. He sat down opposite her, cross-legged on the floor.   


It was a way in. Alex had read, in one of J’onn’s books, about how there was more than one way to say “I love you.”

“You’re not joining any trading parties,” Alex said, by way of response.

“Alex--”

“Kara has lost two sets of parents already and she’s not even fifteen. And I’ve lost my mother and my father and I’m not going to lose you, too. I’m going to re-open the clinic, and you’re not going to lay your neck on the line to try to get us fed.”

J’onn leaned forward, elbow against his knee, and passed one hand over his beleaguered face. 

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“We’re sure,” Kara answered. 

He nodded, and he opened his arms, and Kara and Alex fell into them. Alex, for the first time since she'd gotten well, felt settled, felt stable, felt safe.

  


\--

 

The day after Alex made the deal to fight the girl from Armistice, a messenger showed up at the clinic. He gave her the name of a parley location between the Risen and Current clans’ territories on the lower level. “In three days,” he said, “at noon.”

Kara was there, folding clean blankets to put away. “What was that about?”

Alex shrugged. “I bartered an Armistice girl a round of sparring for twenty gallons of water.”

Kara’s hand shot out and closed around Alex’s biceps. “Alex. You didn’t.”

“It’ll be fine,” Alex shrugged. “It was actually--she was really nice. I really think she just thinks it’ll be fun.”

“Alex, you’re the only Unaligned doctor on the whole Bridge. if you hit your head or break your arm, we’re going to have to pay a Clan doctor to treat you.”

“Then I guess I better not hit my head or break my arm,” Alex said, with a laugh. “Really, Kara, I’ll be fine. It’ll be fun to spar someone other than J’onn for once.”

“Alex--”

“It’ll be  _ fine _ , Kara.”

Kara huffed and finished folding the blankets in the basket. She stood, then, and faced Alex, arms crossed over her chest.

“I’m coming with you.” 

“Kara--”

“No, it’s non-negotiable. If this goes sideways, I will use everything that I am to get you out of there.”

“You can’t reveal yourself, Kara. Do you know what would happen if the Clans found out--”

“What I am and what I can do? Yeah, Alex, I’ve heard that line from you and J’onn once or twice or like a thousand times. And I promise that if revealing myself is what I have to do to keep you safe, I’ll do it. So think of that as incentive to stay safe.”

Alex rolled her eyes. But then she shrugged and nodded. “Okay.”

  


\--

 

J’onn and Kara both came, in the end, J’onn’s face even more distrustful than Kara’s, his jaw clenched. Alex spotted the same Armistice messenger from the previous day standing near a gap between two corrugated metal shacks.  

“This way,” he called, when he saw them, and ducked into the gap.

“I don’t like the smell of this, Alex,” J’onn said.

But Alex could only shrug. She couldn’t turn on her agreement. So she took a breath and followed the boy through the narrow space. A few paces down, it turned a sharp left, and then a few paces after that, opened up again into something like a courtyard. Alex estimated ten paces on each side, and on the far side nothing but the railing stood between them and the open fall into the water.

Maggie was there already, warming up opposite a sparring partner. Alex recognized him: he sometimes worked the Goods counter for Armistice.  Maggie threw quick jab-cross combinations into his open palms, his hands angled to deflect the impact upward. A dozen people lingered along the wall, crouching or standing, talking quietly, all wearing green Armistice markers of some form or another. Alex recognized most of them as members of Maggie’s drop team, but two women, one about Alex’s age, the other probably her mother, were unfamiliar. They were the first to notice Alex, Kara, and J’onn standing awkwardly in the middle of the square, their conversation going silent. Their silence slithered across the line of Armistice, the din of voices quieting, until the only sound in the space was the rhythmic smacking of Maggie’s fists against the other man’s palms. And then that, too, stopped, as the quiet caught them. 

Maggie turned to face them and grinned.

“You came,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

Alex shrugged. “Can’t afford to turn my nose up at twenty gallons.”

Maggie walked toward them, flexing and shaking out her hands in front of her, still smiling. “It’s all there,” she said, gesturing with her head to the corner behind where she’d been warming up. “I’ll help you carry them myself.”

Alex could see the skins there, half behind the legs of the older, disdainful-looking woman. 

“Don’t mind if I check,” J’onn said lowly from behind Alex.

Maggie shrugged. “Be my guest.”

J’onn strode toward the corner. Alex watched his broad shoulders seem to expand, his presence growing, filling this strange space in a way she’d never seen him do before. But the older woman’s pursed lips turned into a full sneer as he approached, standing her ground until he faced her, toe-to-toe.

“If you please, ma’am,” J’onn said.

Her nostrils flared. She eyed him steadily for a moment longer, as though she’d never been so put out, and then stepped just far enough to the side for him to duck past her.

Maggie had half-turned to watch the exchange over her shoulder, so Alex could only see the edge of her face.

“That’s Luthor, isn’t it,” Alex said. “The Armistice head.”

Maggie turned back and half-shrugged, apologetically. “I had to tell my boss so he’d know where the water went. I guess he told her. He told the rest of the team, too. I swear I didn’t. I only told James.”

“She won’t join Armistice,” Kara interjected, stepping up beside Alex. She’d puffed up her chest, an endearing--if totally ineffective--attempt to copy the way J’onn had grown and made himself intimidating. Alex thought of ducklings, bravely following their mothers out into the flowing waters of the River, and thought to herself that she’d make Kara something nice for dinner that night. Maybe dip into the following day’s vegetable ration.

Maggie grinned, unintimidated, and--maybe--endeared? “I know,” she said.

“It’s all here,” J’onn called. Alex looked over at him again. His shoulder collided with Luthor’s as he walked back past her, an act of territorialism and aggression from both of them. Luthor’s nostrils flared again as Alex imagined they might if she stepped in something particularly disgusting.

Alex squared her shoulders and held her head up so she could look at Maggie down the length of her nose.  _ Be powerful _ , J’onn had always told her.  _ Be strong from the moment of engagement. A fight begins long before anyone throws a punch. _

Maggie’s lips quirked, her cheeks bending her eyes. She thought it was  _ funny _ .

“Let’s go, then,” Alex said.

Maggie waved over the man who had been warming her up as J’onn came to stand beside Alex. Kara stepped back and crouched by the railing.

“This is James. He'll be my adjudicator. Who’s yours?”

“J’onn,” Alex said, as J’onn came to stand beside her, and Maggie nodded

Alex and Maggie stepped back, each taking a moment to shake out their muscles and check in with their trainers. 

Alex and J’onn had already decided that Alex should win a round but lose the fight. It would be safer, they decided, for Armistice to think they could beat her. To think they weren’t a threat.

But if Maggie was better than they thought, or a dirtier fighter, Alex should not hesitate to disable her.

“Her left shoulder’s the bad one,” J’onn said quietly, watching Maggie over Alex’s head. “You can use that if you have to.”

Alex nodded. “If I have to.”

She faced Maggie again in the middle of their makeshift ring.

“Three rounds,” said James. “Each round ends when one person submits or stays down for a count of five.”

“K.O. ends the whole fight,” J’onn said.

James half-smiled, and below him, Maggie chuckled a little. “You’re hardcore, man,” James said. “Yes. K.O. ends the whole fight.”

Maggie smiled. Alex’s fingers twitched. James and J’onn stepped back just far enough to give them space. 

“Go,” James said, and they did.

What had Alex expected: flying punches? A din of cheers and jeers from the Armistice lining the wall? She got neither of those things. Their space was quiet but for the sounds of Maggie’s and Alex’s boots scuffing over the floor, and Maggie was patient, her hands up but relaxed, waiting, watching the way Alex moved, just as Alex watched her.

“Come on!” One of the Armistice yelled, eventually. “You fighting or dancing today?”

The fight, from then, went smoothly, and quickly. Alex knew that making the first move was a bad idea if she wanted to win, so she made the first move, exaggerating the exposure of her left side. Maggie didn’t take advantage that first time. Alex flipped Maggie, landed her on her back, but she hopped right up, brushing her hands on her thighs, still grinning. On Alex’s next move, Maggie caught that intentionally-exposed left side, hooked it, and Alex found herself face-down on the ground with a knee in the small of her back and her arm being twisted just beyond the realm of comfort. 

She waited long enough to make it look good, and then she tapped out.

“One for Sawyer,” J’onn said.

Alex won the second round, pinning Maggie efficiently and holding her for the five-count. She let Maggie win the third, and the row of Armistice on the wall erupted in cheers and hoots, chanting “Go Green Go” and clapping one another on the shoulder.

Maggie helped Alex up. “Good one, Danvers. Thanks.”

Alex nodded and bent to brush the dust from her thighs.

“Sawyer, is it?”

Alex looked up, and in the corner of her eye she saw Maggie’s head snap up, too. Over the sound of Maggie’s hollering friends, neither of them had heard Luthor and her daughter walk toward them. Up close, Luthor was even more imposing than she was from afar--she was so very tall, so very regal, made of angles even sharper than the angles of the bridge, her brow reminding Alex of the corrugated metal that made up so much of the housing.

“Yes, ma’am,” Maggie said.

Luthor hummed. “Well done, dear. I’ll remember this.” 

And then she strode forward, moving both Maggie and Alex out of her way through force of presence alone. Her daughter followed behind, a facsimile of her mother, reminding Alex of Kara: a duckling learning to swim in the flow of the River.

“Sawyer!”

It was one of Maggie’s buddies. He clapped her on the shoulder and she turned to look at him.

“You got the attention of the big one,” he crowed. “Little Mags is gonna make it big around here!”

Behind him, a few more of Maggie’s friends hollered loudly again, their chants of “Go Green Go” morphing into chants of “Mag-GIE! Mag-GIE!” and the stomping of boots vibrating through the floor and into the soles of Alex’s feet. Alex felt an unexpected pang of wistfulness, allowing, for a moment, the thought that this part of having a Clan must be nice--to have such a large group of people who were unequivocally on your side and at your back.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned. Kara, quirking her lips in a rueful smile.

“We know what they don’t,” she said, too quietly for the revelling Armistice to hear.

Alex smiled back.

When she turned to look back at Maggie, though, Maggie was looking at her Clan-mates, but her smile looked different than it had looked earlier, when she’d first met Alex’s eyes before the fight. The curve of her lips was forced, as though she’d seen the shape of the cables of the Bridge and was forcing her mouth into a semblance of that arc, as her friends continued to jostle her. Any minute now, Alex thought, they’d hoist her up onto their shoulders and parade her off to Armistice like a hero in the old stories about the history of the war. That would be okay, Alex thought, as long as they left the water. She, Kara, and J’onn could carry it home.

But then Maggie stepped back, batting away the hands reaching for her.

“I gotta help them get the water to their place,” she said.

“Aww, Maggie, c’mon, the tower rats can handle themselves, you don’t want to go to their shady unaligned shack anyway--”

“Guys. Come on. Chill.”

James’ voice carried effortlessly overtop of the others. One of the Armistice--the first one, who had clapped Maggie on the back, turned to him, rolling his eyes. “Whatcha gonna do about it, yellow-belly?”

James shrugged and crossed his arms. It might have been innocuous, but Alex couldn’t help but notice how the movement threw his shoulders back and made the muscles of his arms bulge. Yellow-belly, the other guy had called him, but the band tight around his forearm was Armistice-green.

J’onn cleared his throat from behind Alex’s shoulder and she jumped, just a little--she hadn’t noticed him there. “We’ll take our water and be gone,” he said.

James’ eyes flicked, inscrutably, from J’onn’s to Alex’s and back again, and then he nodded back toward the water skins. The loud Armistice boy stepped back and bowed with a sarcastic flourish. “Step back, step back, the wastrels shall have their water, for they have been shown their place.”

This, and only this, was the reason Alex wished she hadn’t had to throw the fight. Because this was precisely why J’onn had taught her to fight in the first place: to defend against threats from the Clans. To stand up for herself. And they weren’t threatened now, not really, but Alex was half of her parents’ legacy and all that remained of their blood, and to let herself be insulted and demeaned like this shot daggers up her spine. She swallowed, drew herself up straighter, and thought of her sister--of her need to protect her, of her need to keep her in water and food--and stepped forward. She could feel J’onn and Kara behind her, and when they’d moved through the group she heard James say “Come on, guys,” and begin to lead them out the path.

Fifteen gallons of water in three five-gallon oilskin pouches, each tagged with a green tie around the neck, slumped over one another like dirty linens in a basket. It was a lot of water, Alex knew--enough to run the clinic for a week if they didn’t have too much laundry to do. But it looked small, now, as she rolled her shoulder against the little tweak from when she’d let Maggie pin her, as she felt the waistband of her pants rub the new bruise she knew she’d find on her waist.

She crouched, took hold of the neck of the top pouch, and prepared to hoist it up onto her shoulder.

“Hey.”

An olive-skinned hand pressed the pouch back down onto the pile.

“I told you I’d help you carry it.” Maggie said. Alex assumed she’d left with the group.

Maggie tugged the pouch out from under Alex’s hand and then hefted it, first to her hip, and then up onto her uninjured shoulder. The broad, dimpled smile, the one Alex had seen nearly every time she’d spoken to Maggie, was gone, now, replaced with an expression hard to read. It wasn’t angry, nor was it sad. But it wasn’t neutral, either.

Resigned, Alex thought.

“You don’t have to,” Alex said. “We can take it.”

“I said I would, and I’m not a liar,” Maggie replied. She narrowed her eyes as she adjusted the weight. “And besides, you’re probably sore from all those hits you let me get on you.”

Alex glanced at J’onn, who clenched his jaw as he hefted one of the other skins up onto his shoulder. Kara had picked up the final one and was making a good show of pretending she couldn’t have lifted it with a single finger. J’onn turned and began to walk back out toward the noise. The other three followed, single-file, only Alex empty-handed but for the key she’d fished from her pocket.

They walked in silence to the clinic, where Alex cleared a space in a corner to store the water until the five-gallon she’d gotten from Maggie that few days ago was fully used up. They might take one of the skins up to the top of the tower, later, but Kara would probably do that, and Alex didn’t want Maggie watching.

“I don’t know why you threw that fight,” Maggie said, finally.

Alex swallowed, and forced herself to meet Maggie’s eyes, shielded and defensive as they were.

“I didn’t throw the fight.”

“Danvers, don’t lie to me. I can’t stand lying.”

Alex shrugged, and then blinked at her, waiting.

Maggie groaned, a little, in frustration. “You knew my shoulder still hurt. You  _ knew _ I had that huge weakness, but you never touched it.”

“Alex knew no such thing--”

Alex put up a hand to stop J’onn’s defense. She’d thrown the fight, per her agreement with him and Kara, and Maggie had been good enough to notice. There was no point in lying about it anymore.

The silence hung thick between Maggie and Alex, J’onn and Kara hovering a few feet away. It was Kara--who had been quiet since that brief conversation after the fight--who spoke next.

“I need to clean up Alex’s cuts,” she said, “And then we have to open the clinic for afternoon patients. So if you don’t mind, Maggie?”

Maggie nodded, her eyes lingering on Alex’s even as her body began to turn to leave. She stepped toward the door, then stepped again, and put her hand on the handle. And then:

“I want to learn from you,” Maggie said, turning back to Alex again.

Alex blinked. She glanced over at J’onn. He, too, was obviously surprised.

“Not from me,” Alex said. “From J’onn.”

Maggie shifted her gaze to J’onn, who eyed her curiously now, head cocked, arms crossed over his chest as they’d been back before the fight. “What’s in it for us?”

“A gallon per day of training,” Maggie said. “It might not always be purified, but,” she gestured to the stove, “looks like you can purify it here if you need to.”

Alex inhaled sharply. That could add up to a lot of water--enough to satisfy their daily drinking needs, probably. She met J’onn’s eyes over Maggie’s head. His eyebrows rose in query, and she nodded.

He looked at Maggie again. “Why do you want this?”

Maggie slipped her hands into her pockets and shrugged a little. Her brow furrowed and her eyes slipped down to the side, as though she could find her words in the tread of Kara’s boots. “I want to be a better fighter, and I’ve learned all James can teach me,” she said, finally. 

It was, of course, an intentional non-answer. J’onn looked skeptical. They had both seen Luthor’s response to her “win” at the fight. In all likelihood, Maggie was angling for the tools to gain more power and leverage within her Clan.

But Maggie had been honest with Alex so far, it seemed. And when they’d spoken before, all the conversations up to the moment of the fight, Alex had felt warmed by Maggie’s bright eyes and broad smile, by the way her presence felt bigger than she was. Spending time with Maggie made Alex want to spend more time with Maggie, even if it also made her nervous. Maggie made Alex feel less lonely.

J’onn could make sure Maggie never became as good a fighter as Alex.

Alex offered her hand. Maggie smiled widely and took it.

“Your Clan can’t know about this,” Alex said, tightening her grip.

Maggie nodded seriously. “I know.”

They shook hands, and then Maggie turned and offered her grip to J’onn, who took it. 

“I train sunrise and sunset every day,” Alex said. “Meet me outside the clinic before dawn tomorrow and I’ll show you how to make the climb. Bring at least six feet of rope so we can tie you into the safety line.  After that, show up when you want to. Your gallon is due before we train.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Maggie grinned. She turned and walked to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I feel weird about this,” Kara said, after the door had closed behind Maggie. “She’s not telling us everything.”

Alex agreed about that. The motivations of anyone in a Clan would always be hard to parse, because they would always intersect, somehow, with the Clan’s wishes, but there was no way to predict how. When she felt generous, she’d think of Clan people as gulls over the River, crossing or facing or riding the wind but never able to ignore it. When she felt less generous, she’d think of them like fish, riding the current, swimming upstream, eating each other, and sometimes washing up on the rocks of the shore.

But a gallon a day was a gallon a day. Alex knew she couldn’t turn her nose up at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who digs this fic so far and has taken a sec to hit the kudos button or, even more, to write a comment. It really makes my day every time.
> 
> I'm gonna level with you all: I've had a crappy few days (nothing serious, just a lot of little things that add up after awhile), so if you have a moment to tell me what you think, whether it's positive or constructive, I'll be even more grateful than usual. I mean it about the 'constructive' thing, too. Like, one of my pet peeves is to see stories jump around between past and present tense, but I made that mistake myself a few times in drafting this thing. I think I fixed it all, but if you catch anything I missed, PLEASE point it out so I can fix it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hope you’re not afraid of heights, water drop girl,” Alex said.
> 
> “Heights? Pfft, no, are you kidding? I’m fine with heights.”
> 
> By the time Maggie had followed Alex up the network of ropes and ladders from the bottom of the tower to the top, it was clear she was not, in fact, fine with heights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little shorter than I hoped to post today, but I responded to the recent s3 casting announcement by taking time today to add an extra totally gratuitous love scene a few chapters down the line. Because while canon always seems to screw the queer women (in every single show, ugh), we can have all the good things we want in fanfic, JUST 'CUZ. 
> 
> So a slightly shorter post than expected because it's all I had time to edit, but I wanted to get something up to make people happy, because many of you made me happy when I felt down when I posted my last chapter. (Thanks :) )
> 
> I'm going to disclaim here, by the way, that to the extent that Kara has a romantic arc in this fic (and she doesn't really), it's with James. I totally dig Supercorp and Lena might be my favorite character on the show right now, but the romantic tension with James grew organically out of the story I wanted to tell here, and also, I hate how canon wasted James in S2 so I wanted him to be prominent in my story (and he will be, starting a few chapters from now). 
> 
> I don't want any more sadness in the queer Supergirl fandom, so if it makes you sad to imagine Kara paired with anyone other than Lena, I totally get it and respect it and don't want you to be caught off-guard if you keep reading. <3
> 
>  
> 
> **Some blood and medical violence in this chapter.**

When Alex climbed down to the foot of the tower in the morning, Maggie was waiting there, leaning against the stone pillar with a foot propped up. The gallon pouch rested on her knee. Even in the gloaming, Alex could see the dark square on the oilskin and the traces of glue from where Maggie had removed the Armistice patch.

“Good,” Alex said, without preamble. “He doesn’t like to wait, and neither do I.”

“‘Morning to you too, Danvers,” Maggie smirked. She hefted the water with one hand and tossed it lightly, but it caught Alex squarely in the chest, knocking her a half-step back. “Filled that as full as I could,” Maggie said. “Might even be more than a gallon in there. Pure, too, today.”

Alex hefted it, and then prodded near the neck to be sure it was topped up with water and not blown open with air at the mouth. Sure enough, it was full. She nodded, satisfied.

“Hope you’re not afraid of heights, water drop girl,” Alex said.

“Heights? Pfft, no, are you kidding? I’m fine with heights.”

By the time Maggie had followed Alex up the network of ropes and ladders from the bottom of the tower to the top, it was clear she was not, in fact, fine with heights.

She froze up at the top, where she had to heft herself over the stone lip. Her feet clung to the top knot in the climbing rope, her fingers wedged into the gaps between the tower stones, and she quivered there, unmoving, until Alex grabbed one of her arms, and J’onn the other, and together they tugged her up. She lay on the ground for a moment, breathing raggedly. Her face was red with mortification and Alex, taking pity on her, lay down on her back beside her.

“It gets easier,” Alex said. “I had a hard time the first time I came up here.”

J’onn crouched by their feet. “She did,” he agreed. “And I don’t think I’ve ever heard her admit that before, so congratulations, Sawyer.”

Maggie laughed a little at that, and the laughter helped calm her breathing. She rolled her head to face Alex and said, “You better never tell any of my Clan about this.”

“Or what--you’ll fight me?” Alex grinned, and Maggie backhanded her playfully against the thigh.

“Seriously,” Maggie said. “You don’t know what kind of grief they’d give me.”

Alex sat up and, with exaggerated solemnity, drew an X across her chest with her finger. “Cross my heart.” Then she stood up and bent down to offer Maggie a hand, and Maggie took it and let herself be pulled to her feet.

J’onn cleared his throat. “If you’re both ready?”

And they began.

 

\--

 

Their training went differently--very differently--than that first fight. Maggie hit the ground often, and hard. Alex was careful to avoid gripping Maggie’s injured shoulder, or throwing her onto it. And Maggie gamely bounced back to her feet after every fall, taking the stances that J’onn taught her and waving Alex in to engage again.

And Alex learned from fighting Maggie, even if Maggie didn’t present any real hand-to-hand challenge. She was the better part of a foot shorter than J’onn and probably weighed a third less than he did, but that didn’t make her easier to fight: she was faster, her center of gravity lower and harder to reach. And she had skills that J’onn hadn’t taught her to fight. She was masterful in manipulating the force of Alex’s jabs and throws, encouraging Alex’s natural momentum in ways that made her stumble and have to catch herself.

Maggie came to the tower most mornings, and occasional evenings when she could sneak away from her Clan. When her shoulder was fully healed--Alex had taken to checking it for her once every few days to ensure they weren’t injuring it further--mornings happened less and evenings more as Maggie resumed her duties at the drop. Alex would notice, on the evenings after Maggie had dropped, that the muscles of Maggie’s arms and shoulders were warmer and firmer than in the mornings or the evenings of days when she hadn’t. There was something viscerally satisfying, something aesthetically perfect, about the way the swells and hollows of Maggie’s arms slipped into Alex’s hands when they’d grapple.

“I miss sitting up there and reading while you train,” Kara said dejectedly one day as they cleaned their dishes after supper. “Like, I’m happy you have a friend and a training partner and everything, but I just wish I could sit there with you and a book.”

The guilt over that nagged at Alex for weeks.

“We could tell her about the reading?” Alex said, one day. “I don’t think she’d tell anyone.”

Kara shrugged.

Kara continued to hold misgivings about Maggie.

“She’s nice,” Kara said. “I see why you like her. But I don’t know, I can’t help but feel…”

Late one night, when Alex and Kara were lying in their beds, Kara said quietly, “I don’t know if I could ever trust someone who picks a side. Especially when the sides don’t seem to mean anything.”

Alex could understand that.

 

\--

 

A few weeks after their parents were gone, Kara told Alex how she came to be who she was.

Some of it, she said, happened before she was born; when her parents had had trouble conceiving and had signed up for a government in-vitro program that promised strong, healthy babies.

They hadn’t known, Kara said, that the government was using synthetic viruses to modify DNA structures at the zygote stage.

They hadn’t known that the in-vitro program was designed to test, and eventually create, super-soldiers to end the war.

Her healing powers had always been with her, from infancy, and her parents hadn’t worried about that. It was nice, they said, to have a baby who didn’t cry over bumped knees and scuffs.

But as she got older, and edged into the earliest stages of puberty, the other powers showed up. She sneezed and accidentally knocked a small child out of his chair. She would levitate without meaning to.

It was the heat-vision that piqued the government’s interest. Apparently none of their other test subjects had displayed that.

They put her through a battery of tests. Her powers hadn’t fully come in yet, but they could control for that; they could predict what she would become, and they were excited about it. She had one weakness, though: her bones had not developed the rest of her body’s regenerative power. They were, instead, aligned with the standard strength and brittleness of human bones.

And so they’d taken her to a secret facility near the Bridge. The area was fortified, Kara said, because the Bridge was there, and the secret facility was hidden between the fortifications. They cut her open using some kind of enhanced system that prevented her from healing long enough for them to operate, and reinforced her bones using a biochemical alloy. She remembered that anaesthetic didn’t work on her so they’d operated on her while she was conscious. Her mother had told her that she’d screamed the whole time.

That was when her parents decided to take her and flee. Kara hadn’t understood it at the time, but they were trying to take her to the Bridge.

So they took her, in the night, bloodied and exhausted, and they fled.

But the Windside couldn’t have their most successful super soldier to date given to the Bridge, or even worse, to the Leeside.There had been a chase, and guns fired from turrets and fortifications as that came to a head just inside the Windside wall. The Wall stations did not have mounted guns facing inward, but they had handguns and free rifles and they had shot at them--at Kara, her mother, and her father--as they had run toward the gate.

Kara, of course, was impervious.

Her parents were not.

The last thing they ever said to her was to get through the gate, get through the gate, get through the gate.

And so she did.

She could only imagine that the guards stopped shooting at her because they’d seen their bullets bounce off her skin, or perhaps because they didn’t want to break the truce of the Bridge. So she’d run, five steps past the gate, ten, twenty, and then she’d realized she was alone. Ahead of her was the Bridge she’d never seen, its people clustering at its edge and looking a her, their eyes wide and fearful. And Kara had felt so alone, so terrified, turned out by her own homeland, and suddenly without a family.

Until Eliza had taken Jeremiah’s white shirt and made it into a truce flag and had come to get her. Eliza, and Jeremiah, and Alex, and J’onn: their only side was to not have one. Their only priorities were to be good people and to care for those they loved while also caring for those in need.

Alex and Kara had taken to sleeping on opposite sides of their room on all but the coldest nights, with Alex slipping into the space that had been their parents’ to give each of them more space but also because that space, its blankets and bedding, had stood for warmth and comfort since she’d been a child seeking respite from bad dreams. The curtains were drawn back and pinned, though. Kara had said that it made her feel safer to be able to look across the room and see Alex sleeping there any time during the night. Alex would never say it--she had a role to play, after all, as big sister and protector--but she felt the same way about Kara.

That night, though, after listening to Kara’s story, Alex crawled across the room and slipped beside Kara into the bed that had been theirs, and hers before that. Kara was growing--the plates on her bones made of a biochemical alloy that could grow, along with the rest of her body, through her body’s own metabolic processes--but she was not yet taller than Alex, and so Alex curled around her, tucked their knees and hips together, and whispered, “I hate that your worst day was my best day.”

“Your best day?” Kara asked quietly.

“Because I got a sister,” Alex said, tugging the blanket over both of them.

Calm sleep was rare, in the days after Eliza and Jeremiah, but it came to both of them that night.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex glanced over at Maggie. Maggie was trying hard not to stare at the book in Kara’s hand, her finger marking a page. Her eyes flitted warily up to Kara’s face, and then over to Alex’s, and back to Kara’s again. “Is--is that...?”
> 
> “A book,” Kara said, holding it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some unexpected free time this evening, so hey! Two chapters in one day, why not? This was one of my favorites to write in the whole fic.
> 
> **Chapters 4 and 5 were posted a few hours apart. Make sure you read 4 before you read this one!**

By the time the moon had cycled twice, the decision about Maggie and reading was ripped from them.

The days were getting shorter, so Maggie and Alex took to training into the darkness.

“It’s useful,” J’onn said. “The night is more dangerous than the daytime.”

But the darkness conceals the clouds, especially when that darkness is always thinned by the lights of the bridge. They didn’t notice the clouds roll in, didn’t notice the change in the smell of the air, didn’t notice any of it until, with a clatter, the sky opened on them. Alex swore, and Maggie laughed, and J’onn urged both of them to the rope which was knotted for precisely this kind of occasion. Maggie was no longer afraid. She followed Alex confidently over the wall and down, boots catching easily on each knot. Alex stopped at the next level and Maggie moved to slip past her, toward the next ladder and down, but Alex grabbed her by the arm and tugged her into the room behind her.

“I’ll be in mine,” J’onn shouted over the clatter of the rain on the tin roof. Alex nodded and tugged the door closed behind them, and then turned into the room.

Maggie knelt just inside, bashful and dripping onto the floor. From across the room, Kara blinked owlishly at them both, open book in her lap.

“Um. Hi,” she said, uncomfortably.

Alex looked from her, to the book, to Maggie, who had clearly seen Kara reading and now seemed not to know where to put her eyes.

Well, shit.

“I’ll get the…” Alex gestured vaguely to the clothes rack folded behind the stove. She unfolded it and hung her overshirt on its corner. Then she pulled a basket from the corner and rummaged two dry shirts from the top and two dry sets of pants from underneath. Alex only owned two pairs--the one she was wearing and one other set--but she had a few of her mother’s that she’d never been able to wear or to give away.

She held a shirt and her own extra pants to Maggie, who shook the water off her hands before accepting them.

“You can hang your wet things on the rack. They dry pretty quickly by the stove,” Alex said.

Maggie nodded.

Kara cleared her throat. “I’ll just, um, I’ll just let you...” she reached over to unhook her curtain and draw it across.

Alex and Maggie turned their backs to one another and changed out of their wet clothes. When Alex turned back around, Maggie was arranging her things along one side of the rack, leaving space for Alex’s on the other. The green Armistice kerchief she’d been wearing around her neck hung from the rack’s corner. She had the trousers rolled up at the waist, and something about the way the bare soles of her feet poked from within the slightly-too-long cuffs made Alex feel an unexpected surge of affection, a flutter in her chest that she breathed through and then ignored.

Alex hung her wet clothes.

“So,” Alex said, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from her shirt on the rack, “This is… this is us.”

“It’s nice, Maggie said. “I’ve, I’ve never--it’s cozy. We don’t get this much privacy back at Armistice.”

“No?”

“Maybe if I get married, I’d like to think my wife and I would find a place, or make one somewhere.”

Alex had long known that Maggie had been with women in the past, but hadn’t been sure whether her preference was exclusive or not. Now, she imagined Maggie and some faceless girl, in matching green armbands, opening the door to a home much like this one, but down on the surface of Windside Above in Armistice territory. Imagined them smiling as they installed the stove and lit it for the first time. Imagined them lying close on a sleeping mat, sharing a blanket.

The image made her feel warm, a pleasant pressure in her solar plexus, as though she were bracing it to take a punch.

But Maggie continued. “I sleep in a hall now with a lot of other people. You should see the lengths people go to to have sex. Sometimes they just lock the door and the other seven of us who sleep there are just stuck outside until they decide they’re done.” She laughed forced, like a cough, and picked at a loose thread on the knee of the pants.

Alex chuckled uncomfortably. She was about twenty-eight, but she’d had sex exactly once: an awkward, fumbling attempt with a Risen boy in the weeks after her parents’ deaths that was, underneath, a desperate attempt to ease her grief. She had been the instigator, flirting with unexpected ease as she bartered with him for rations, and he had helped her to carry them back to her home--a gesture in itself, since she could easily have carried it alone. Kara and J’onn had been out somewhere and Alex had pulled him into the room--this very room they were in now--and fumbled at his clothes. It hadn’t been particularly pleasurable, but his hands had been kind, and he had been gentle, and for the duration, Alex had felt something other than grief and fear.

The next time she saw him had been a few weeks later, when she’d gone back to Risen to buy more rations. He had smiled at her and given her another ration above what she paid for. And that was the closest they ever came to acknowledging it.

Alex held back from asking Maggie not to fiddle with that thread--she hadn’t had time to fix it, and didn’t want it to turn into a hole. She occupied herself by filling a pot from Maggie’s gallon from that day and setting it on the stove to warm. They had almost never had a guest, apart from J’onn when he was new, but she knew the basic tenets of hospitality. Rule one: offer the guest something to drink. Warm, ideally, after getting soaked like this.

Alex and Maggie’s heads turned at the sound of Kara’s curtain drawing back along its rod.

“I have literally never heard you two sound so uncomfortable around each other,” she said, exasperated.

Alex glanced over at Maggie. Maggie was trying hard not to stare at the book in Kara’s hand, her finger marking a page. Her eyes flitted warily up to Kara’s face, and then over to Alex’s, and back to Kara’s again. “Is--is that...?”

“A book,” Kara said, holding it out.

Maggie held out her hands to take it and then paused, as though afraid to touch.

“It’s okay,” Alex encouraged.

Maggie took it carefully and turned it in her hands, looking at the front and back covers, and running her thumb along the soft unbound side of the pages. They were worn and feathered out from all the time they’d been turned, Kara having read it more times than they could count.

“You can read this,” Maggie said, wonderingly, without looking up.

“I can,” Kara said. “Alex doesn’t know that language, but she can read some of the other ones we have.”

Maggie’s eyes shot up at that. “Other ones?”

Alex caught Kara’s eyes over Maggie’s head. They had learned, over the years, to have entire conversations without speaking. Alex eventually nodded her acquiescence and Kara retrieved the battered box from near the head of her bed.

Inside were three more books, and Maggie’s eyes went as round as saucers. “What are these? Where did you get them?”

Alex explained about J’onn, how he had come from Leeside and brought these books as gifts. Two of them were in the Bridge language, written by land-dwellers who had learned to speak it from Clan traders and developed a system for writing it. One was in the Leeside language, and one was in the Windside language.

Alex could read the two books in the Bridge language, and J’onn had taught her to understand parts of the Leeside book. Only Kara could read all of them, having learned each language as a small child in school. J’onn could read all, too, but by his own admission, he struggled a little with the Windside language.

Maggie opened each book reverentially, squinting at the black markings on each page, and then rotating it slowly in her hands as though they might, if viewed at precisely the right angle, suddenly make sense and give meaning, like the picture in binoculars coming into focus.

The Leeside book had a section of pictures in it. They were faded, and blurred in some areas, but they were still easy to recognize as detailed images of plants, their leaves and roots and bark and berries. They had writing under each one, but those words, not even J’onn could understand. He said they were in an ancient language that nobody could really speak anymore.

Alex loved that book. She could only read parts of it, but she knew it was a book about plants, the different kinds and where they grew and what they were good for. Alex had only once been close to wild plants, that night when Kara had taken her flying, and she still dreamed, sometimes, about the feeling of the grass against her palms. She would read this book, and look at its pictures, and imagine a world built out of its parts. She would imagine gathering all the edible berries she could eat, and enough for Kara and J’onn, too. She would imagine touching all the leaves, even the ones the book said would give her a rash, just to know what they would feel like.

On the stove, the water boiled. Alex took three cups from the box by the stove, pinched a few tea leaves into each one, and topped them up with water. She handed one each to Maggie and Kara, who nodded their thanks, and then sipped her own.

“How do you known all these languages?” Maggie asked Kara.

Kara blew on her drink to cool it, and then sipped carefully. “I’m from Windside. I lived there until I was nine.”

Maggie blinked at her. “You’re the girl,” she said, as though she’d made a remarkable discovery.

Kara shrugged.

“There are stories about a sick girl from Windside that some Unaligned brought onto the Bridge, maybe ten years ago. I heard she--you?--she caused an epidemic. People say she died.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “She didn’t cause an epidemic. She wasn’t sick, she was injured. Kara doesn’t get sick.”

That much was true, though Alex had no intention of offering details.

“I learned the language of both countries as a child in school,” Kara said, “and a little bit of the language of the Bridge. I learned that here, mostly.”

Maggie whistled lowly. “You could own everything, you know? This whole place, with all those languages, and reading.”

Alex tipped her head to blow on her tea. If it helped hide her face, that was a bonus. Because Kara could own everything, if she wanted. Her languages and her reading were only the tip of her tools for that.

But Kara only quirked her lips, and said, “I’ve lived through what happens if someone owns everything.”

They sipped their tea in silence for a moment. Then Maggie said, “We have some books over at Armistice.” Her tone was carefully balanced, just loud enough to be heard over the clatter of rain on the roof, as though she were announcing a storm approaching and didn’t want the children to be afraid.

But of course, Kara’s eyebrows shot up, and Alex felt hers do the same.

“Kind of a lot of them,” Maggie said. “Maybe seven or eight? They’re in Luthor’s room. She keeps them on display on a shelf, in a box with a glass cover. I think she wants people to see them there, to know that she has them.”

“Why?” Kara asked.

“Because everyone knows that books mean power,” Maggie said, “even if nobody really agrees about why. The old-timers in Armistice say that the four-Clan system on the Bridge was never meant to last, and that when one Clan finally establishes its dominance, it will be rewarded with the sight needed to know how to understand books. Books have all the knowledge in the world, they say, so once one Clan can read books, they can lead our people off the Bridge.”

Alex leaned in, brow furrowed. “Then why doesn’t Armistice try to take over the other Clans?”

“A lot of us think we should,” Maggie sighed. “But if you’re going to believe the old timers about that, you have to also believe that a lot of people will die on the way to one Clan’s victory, because that’s in the stories, too. I think on a lot of levels, people are just scared that if they start the fight they’ll end up losing it.”

“‘A lot of people,’” Alex echoed. “You keep saying that. What do you think?”

“I think war is the reason we all live on this bridge,” she said, resignedly. “And I the old timers’ stories are just stories, and I think Luthor loves her power, and that if we were smart we’d be trying to decode our books and learn from them instead of keeping them under glass to look at from afar. Maybe we could come together over books. Maybe we could fix things for ourselves.” She looked down into her cup, swirling the dregs of her tea and watching the leaves circle, and shrugged. “But I also know my place.”

Alex waited for her to go on. But the quiet stretched, and Maggie kept watching the movement of her tea leaves. Over her head, Alex met Kara’s eyes. They had mastered the art of silent communication over the years: wordless exchanges over the heads of patients they knew weren’t going to survive, of wives who pretended their injuries weren’t caused by their husbands, of Clan enforcers who would commit acts of violence as soon as they walked out the door with their wounds bandaged.

Kara leaned forward and rested her fingertips--just the barest touch, just the pads--on Maggie’s jittering forearm, stilling it.

“What’s your place?” she asked gently.

Maggie looked up at Kara, and then turned her head to look at Alex, eyebrows furrowed. Alex made herself open, hands holding her mug low in her lap.

“I do the water drop, so I guess that makes me sexy, or something.” Maggie rolled her eyes in self-deprecation. “But mostly it makes me a grunt with a body that’s valuable and a mind that’s not. Nobody asks me to think, and--” she shrugged. “Maybe it’s a good thing. I didn’t even know that books had languages. I didn’t… It never occurred to me to think that way, that that’s how they worked.”

As she spoke, Maggie had slouched, making herself small. It was the most vulnerable Alex had ever seen her--more vulnerable than when Alex had her pinned in training. More vulnerable than that first time she had climbed the rope to the top of the tower and gotten stuck, unable to cross the lip.

Kara’s hand was still on Maggie’s forearm. She leaned forward on her knees and moved it to Maggie’s shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “You can’t imagine all the stuff I didn’t know when I got here. Don’t beat yourself up for not knowing what you’ve never had the chance to learn.”

Alex smiled. That was what her mother had said to Kara when Kara was new, and learning, and frustrated.

Maggie smiled a little, too, cautiously, and shook her head in quiet surprise. “God, you’re nice, Kara,” she said. “I should have guessed you couldn’t be from the Bridge, to be as nice as you are.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kara smiled, “I’ve met way nicer people here than out there.”

A crack of lightning flashed through the gap between the door and the wall, chased by a deep rumble of thunder, and Maggie jumped a little, eyeing the roof a little fearfully as though she worried it wouldn’t withstand the onslaught.

“I don’t know how you guys can live up here all the time,” Maggie said. “I don’t mean any offense by that, but just… how high up are we?”

“Pretty high,” Alex said, noncommittally. “J’onn checks the mountings at least once a month in good weather, and more after storms like this. We all do. They say that no home has ever fallen off a Bridge tower, you know, since the beginning.”

“Okay,” Maggie muttered.

“Though I guess there’s a first time for everything,” Alex amended lightly, and Maggie laughed, backhanding her playfully on the knee.

Across from them, Kara smiled, even as thunder rumbled again. “Looks like you’re here for awhile,” she said, setting her book aside and rising to her knees to slip past them. “I’m going to make us something to eat.”

“You don’t have to,” Maggie said quickly. “I’m fine.”

As if on cue, her stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard over the rain, and she set her hand over it, as if to dampen any further sound.

“Maggie,” Alex said. “We never have guests, and you’ve been bringing us water almost every day. Please have supper with us.”

Maggie glanced down and bit her lip nervously, but nodded.

Alex got up and shifted the clothing rack to give Kara a little more space to work. Maggie picked up a book Kara had discarded and opened it, squinting down at the letters. Alex came to sit beside her and gently took the book from her hands, reaching across to set it in its box. She pulled out another one--one that she could read.

“This one’s a story,” she said. “It’s about people who live on a bridge. But not like us. They can leave whenever they want to.”

The letters on the cover were slightly raised, and Maggie reached over and trailed her fingers over them.

Alex pointed to the first letter. “This is an A. It sounds--well, it can sound like different things, but in this word it sounds like ‘ah.’” She pointed to the next two letters. “ And then these are L’s, and they sound like LLLL. So together, this word is ‘ah-lll.’ ‘All.’”

“Ay el el. All,” Maggie echoed, eyes following Alex’s finger.

“Right,” Alex said. She pointed to the next word. “Now this one, this is a T…”

And that’s how, as the rain beat down outside and Kara made dinner, Alex began to teach Maggie to read.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone wants to be beautiful when the right person is looking at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to skey and EllieC for their questions about the look/feel of the bridge and the people who live on it. I tried to work some of that into this chapter, because you're right: I hadn't really described it well. I hope this helps fill in some of the gaps for you!

Reading lessons became part of Alex and Maggie’s routine. When it rained, or when the wind whipped too high for them to train on top of the tower, they would huddle by the light and Alex would go over the letters, teach Maggie the sounds they made and how they fit together. Maggie’s eyes brightened for this even more than they brightened for a good spar or for finally succeeding at a tricky take-down that she’d been struggling to master. The way letters corresponded to sounds and combined to make words--she devoured it, put the pieces together like a game in her mind.

“You’re picking this up much more easily than I did,” Alex said, a few weeks in.

“I’m older than you were,” Maggie replied.

“J’onn and Kara say that on land, on both sides, children start learning this when they’re four years old.”

Maggie’s eyes widened incredulously at that. “I can’t even imagine.”

That first evening, they read for an hour until J’onn darted across through the rain from his own home, carrying a covered pot of seasoned rice. Kara was just finishing her part, seasoned fried beans and vegetables. J’onn squinted at Alex and Maggie when he saw them set the book aside, but he said nothing, instead setting the rice on the stovetop to keep warm. Alex pulled bowls from the shelf to serve them all.

By the end of dinner, the rain had stopped. Maggie ducked behind Alex’s curtain to change back into her own now-dry clothes, and when she emerged, her green kerchief was tied loosely around her neck. 

Alex climbed down to the bottom of the tower with her, carrying an empty gallon water pouch for Maggie to refill for next time.

“You know,” Maggie said, “That might have been the first time in my life I wore clothes with nothing green on them.” 

Alex chuckled as she handed Maggie the water pouch. “Well, I’ll see if I can dig up something green to keep around so we don’t cramp your style next time, Sawyer.”

Maggie laughed back softly. “It was nice not to wear it. Alex--” She cut herself off, shrugging the strap on the oilskin up over her shoulder and then crossing her arms over her chest, hugging herself.

Alex waited.

“I’dliketolearntoreadforreal,” Maggie finally blurted, blushing.

_ Oh. _

Afterward, Alex would think it strange that she hadn’t foreseen that request, but she hadn’t, their discussion of sounds and letters seeming, to her, to be nothing more than a way to pass the time.

“Okay,” Alex said.

“I can’t trade you more water. It’s hard enough to get the gallons for training, sometimes, there’s no way--”

“Hey, hey,” Alex grinned, and reached forward to squeeze Maggie’s elbow reassuringly. “It’s okay. I’ll teach you. And you can just… you can owe me. Owe us. I’m sure we’ll come up with something to trade, eventually.” 

Maggie’s grin, her dimples deep, lit up the dark of the bridge. “I can live with owing you something.”

“All right,” Alex smiled. “It’s a deal, then.”

“It’s a deal.”

That promise of future favors was the leverage Alex thought she’d need to convince J’onn that teaching Maggie to read wasn’t a terrible idea. She took her time climbing back up, playing out that conversation in a dozen different possible incarnations until she pulled the heavy door open and slipped back inside.

The dirty dishes were stacked in the basin by the stove and Alex went to them wordlessly to start the washing up. 

“You’re teaching her to read?” J’onn asked, looking up from where he’d been tinkering with a broken vid-screen--one of the many things he did to help keep them in rations.

Alex nodded.

“It was kind of cute,” Kara piped up. She’d stretched back out on her bed, reading her book again. 

J’onn hummed. “Good,” he said. “She’s a good one, that Maggie, I think.”

And that was the end of that.

 

\--

 

Between the hand-to-hand training and the reading lessons, Alex started to feel like Maggie probably spent more time atop their tower than she did at Armistice.

“Don’t people notice how often you’re gone?” Alex asked, one day, as they were stretching on the training floor.

Maggie shrugged one shoulder without breaking her seated hamstring stretch. “I drop every day. I do my share for the Clan. So let them notice, whatever. I don’t care anymore.” 

Maggie might not care, Alex thought, but her Clan-mates surely did.

And the very next day, Alex was proven right. 

Alex and J’onn and Kara were in the ring first, as usual. Alex was doing jumping jacks to warm up when Kara looked up and said, “Someone’s coming.”

“Someone, like, not Maggie someone?” Alex asked.

“Maggie  _ and _ someone. I don’t recognize the sound of the other climber below her.”

Alex and J’onn looked at each other and nodded. In wordless agreement, they stepped quietly toward the top of the rope but stayed just far enough back to avoid being visible over the edge.

Maggie’s hands appeared at the top of the wall and then she hopped over the lip; J’onn grabbed her and immediately tugged her behind him.

“Wha--”

Alex shushed her.

They waited in the quiet. Nothing happened for a minute, another one, another one after that. But then the rope began to wriggle and jump under the weight of a climbing body. Then a hand took hold of the ledge, and then another--a man's hands, dark-skinned. Maggie gasped. And then the mystery man vaulted over the lip only to be met by Alex and J’onn quickly catching, disabling, and pinning him to the ground. J’onn held him there with a knee to the small of his back and an arm half-twisted into the dirt.

“Ow ow ow okay okay okay!” the man said, and it was only then that Alex recognized him: James, Maggie’s trainer and adjucator from the fight, all those months ago. Maggie barked his name in surprise, and J’onn growled, “What the hell is this?”

“James,” Maggie said, disappointment and relief both evident in her tone. “He’s not a threat,” she said to J’onn, “you can let him up.”

But Maggie’s word wasn’t good enough when this space was threatened.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” James said. “I just want to talk to Maggie for a minute.”

Maggie set down her gallon of water by Kara’s book, obscuring it from view, and walked toward J’onn and James. “It’s okay. I swear it’s okay.”

J’onn looked over at Alex, who shrugged. 

“If you pull anything, we’ll throw you off this tower without thinking twice about it," Alex said. (J'onn rolled his eyes at her. He'd want to talk to her, later, about the immediacy of her threats of violence. But now was not the time.)

“Okay," James said. "I really, really don’t want to cause any trouble here. That’s not why I came.”

With a final squeeze of James’ wrist, J’onn stood up and backed away.

James stood slowly and brushed the grit off the front of his shirt and his trousers and the inside of his Armistice wristband. “Nice friends you got here, Mags,” he said drily. 

“They’re Unaligned, James, they don’t have a goon squad to protect them like we do.” 

“Yeah. Right,” James said noncommittally. “Can we talk for a minute, please?”

Maggie followed him a few steps away from the group, and Alex could see them talking animatedly, but in tones too low to hear over the breeze of the altitude. She looked over at Kara to find Kara already looking at her and smiling; she nodded, and the meaning was clear:  _ I’ll tell you later. _

After a few minutes, Maggie and James walked to where J’onn, Alex, and Kara were waiting.

“I’ve seen Maggie training up here, and started wondering why she was spending so much time at it. Her kin have been wondering what she’s up to.”

“What are you going to tell them?” J’onn asked.

James shrugged one shoulder, casually. “That it’s exactly what we’ve all seen from the bottom: that she’s been training with you guys.”

Alex glanced over to Kara who nodded almost imperceptibly: this lined up with what she’d overheard.

“Okay,” Alex said. “So, you know your way down.” 

“I want to train with you, too,” James said. 

That… was unexpected. Alex looked over at J’onn, who met her eyes and shrugged and then looked back at James.

“What’s in it for us?” J’onn asked. “Maggie brings us water.”

“I don’t have that kind of access to water, but I have access to disposable goods. Toothpaste, matches, hair combs, cookware, sometimes even clothes, that kind of thing. I can bring you supplies like that.”

J’onn grunted, then looked at Maggie, whose arms hung by her sides but whose hands were clenched into tight, nervous fists. “What do you think?”

“James is my good, trusted friend,” Maggie said, “and I think he’d benefit from the training like I have.”

J’onn hummed.

“What do you think, Kara?” Alex asked, ignoring the way Maggie’s forehead furrowed and turned puzzled that Kara, who did not train with them, was being asked.

Kara quirked her lips and made a show of looking him up and down, overtop of her glasses. “Oh, I dunno,” she said, “he seems all right to me.”

Alex smiled and turned to J’onn. “Well, if Maggie’s in, and Kara’s in, then I’m in.”

J’onn sighed and tipped his eyes heavenward. “When did I sign up to run the Bridge’s dojo for misfits?” he moaned good-naturedly, but when he looked at the four people around him, they looked back at him blankly.

“Dojo?” Maggie asked.

“Oh--uh, boxing gym?” J’onn tried.

They all shook their heads  _ no _ .

“J’onn is from Leeside,” Maggie explained apologetically to James, who could only nod and shrug.

J’onn rolled his eyes. “Forget it. Come on, harness up. Let’s go.”

 

\--

 

That night, over supper, Alex and J’onn asked Kara what she’d heard.

“He was angry, but I think it’s because he was worried about her,” she said. “He kept saying things like, ‘What are you thinking?’ and ‘I can’t believe you’d do this again.’ And she kept saying, ‘This isn’t the same,’ and ‘I’m not breaking any rules. I’m not doing anything wrong this time,’ and he was like ‘Really?’ but in a way that made it clear he didn’t believe her, and she said, ‘Really. This is totally above-board. Except for the water, which I guess I’m kind of stealing, except that every drop I pick up a gallon or two above my quota and then I don’t log them, so nobody’s missing out, really.”

“You make it sound like Maggie has something sketchy in her past,” Alex said.

Kara nodded. “They made it sound that way--like she’d gotten into trouble for something. But it was really obvious from the way he was speaking that he was on her side of whatever it was. It was… kind of sweet, really. They’re not a couple, are they? I thought she was only into girls.”

Alex affirmed, “She’s only into girls,” and then took a long drink of water and looked away.

But not fast enough to miss Kara’s crooked smile.

 

\--

 

When had Alex started caring about how she looked?  

It wasn’t that she hadn’t cared at all before. She checked the mirror by the door every morning, made sure she was presentable and reasonably put-together for her patients. She’d seen her parents do it for the same reason: to make it easy for patients to trust her, to see her as serious and professional.

But nowadays, she found herself caring, a little, about whether her hairstyle made her look  _ pretty _ , not just professional. She’d comb it when it was wet to encourage it to part cleanly and make it easy to tuck behind her ear. She would ask Kara to cut her hair more often, trimming away the fuzzy ends and leaving her with a somewhat tidy line along the edge of her jaw.

There wasn’t much to be done about clothing. By long tradition, everyone dressed in shades of black, brown, grey, and white. The only colors that anyone wore came from Clan -affiliated armbands or patches or kerchiefs or hats. Nobody on the Bridge had more than two or three outfits, but the Clan traders would bring home new clothing for their own people, once in awhile. For the first time that she could remember, Alex found herself looking enviously at the Clan members she’d spy, from time to time, wearing new clothes: their bleached white shirts, their crisp, dark, black trousers or brown jackets, their grey t-shirts that were, somehow, a cleaner-looking, richer grey than the grey that Alex wore.

Because by the time clothing found its way to Alex and Kara and J’onn, it was all grey: the blacks and browns faded, and the whites turned dingy, and even the stuff that was always grey turned patchy and pilled and worn-out. New clothing was not a luxury they could justify, so they traded for the older stuff, Clan clothing with the patches torn off, whatever they could find and trade for that was in reasonably good condition and that fit comfortably. And then, over years, they would maintain it, stitching and darning holes and patching elbows and knees and bottoms of things that became threadbare. They were good at sewing, all three of them, but there were only so many times you could stitch up an aging shirt before it began to pull and pucker in strange places. Alex had never troubled herself over stitched-up clothing before. If she was meeting patients, she’d do her best to avoid clothing with open holes and to make sure her stitching and repairs were tidy. But now, though, she’d pause halfway down the tower to watch Maggie climb her rope, all grace and elegant movement. Maggie, she thought, was made of the clean, smooth lines of a confident artist, and Alex herself, the way things tugged and pinched and pulled, was made more of the erratic, indecisive but overconfident lines of a toddler’s hand-drawn scribbles.

Alex had always preferred, when possible, to be invisible in the crowds of the Bridge. As a child, before she’d been able to protect herself and her family's possessions, she’d learned the hard way that it was best not to be noticed. J’onn had made it less dangerous to be seen, but then Kara had arrived, and Alex had continued to make herself invisible to model invisibility to Kara. It came easily, to Alex, to disappear, but Kara, who had a quiet, effortless beauty, a smile that radiated warmth, had had to learn, over time, how to exist and move unseen.

Yet now, suddenly, Alex wanted to be noticed.

How many people lived on this bridge? She didn’t know. Low to the ground of the Bridge, homes made out of water-sealed plywood and paint-flaking corrugated metal stacked on top of one another, taking up most of its surfaces and braced against the lower ends of the Bridge cables, housing families of all different sizes. The unmarried rank-and-file of the Clans lived in large barracks. How many people must it take to fill all those homes, all those barracks beds? Alex really couldn’t know. She couldn’t really estimate how many Armistice there were from looking down upon them from her perch in the tower above their ground, because there was no space on the Bridge large enough for all of them to gather at once. On a mile and a half of bridge, with two levels, there had to be two or three thousand Armistice alone, and the other three clans were just as big.

So many people, with newer clothes and tidier lives and homes that didn’t sit so close to the sun and the thunderclouds. 

So many people, and she wanted, so suddenly, and--if she were honest with herself--so desperately, to be the one that Maggie noticed.

Alex was combing through the knots in her damp hair, one evening after training. Maggie had perfected a take-down she’d been struggling to master, and when she let Alex back up off the ground, she’d been glowing, her dimples like parentheses around her grin. 

“You’ve got a little grit,” Maggie had said to her, reaching up to brush some dirt off Alex’s cheek, and Alex had blushed red, strangely and embarrassingly mortified at having had dirt on her face, despite the fact that they'd been fighting and grappling and so Maggie had been the one to, effectively, put the dirt there.

Still, after the training she bathed, and after the bathing she tugged a comb roughly through the knots of her hair, her gut churning with frustrating, tangled emotions, until Kara came up and stilled her hands.

“Let me,” Kara said, and Alex wilted and handed her the comb.

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Kara said, as she worked the comb through gently, teasing at the knots until they came apart without pulling.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Oh, god, who cares about things like that?”

“Everyone does,” Kara said quietly. “Everyone wants to be beautiful when the right person is looking at them. So I’m just telling you: you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise they kiss soon.
> 
> ...very soon.
> 
> Srsly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex was so surprised that she froze for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG YOU GUYS the wonderful EllieC made art for my fic and I'm still just like... my jaw is on the floor? I wanted to embed it here but I'm posting from an ipad so I'm having a little trouble pulling the URL, but you should go see it in the comments from last chapter, because it is THE BEST.

James became a regular at their morning training, and Alex loved that she rarely had to worry about running out of toothpaste, or soap, or matches. James, it turned out, was funny, and kind, and he didn’t pull his punches when he sparred with Alex, nor did he seem to have any issue with the fact that she could pin him at almost every attempt.

Once Maggie found out about the books, Kara had been able to resume her morning reading on the tower. With the addition of James, the books were driven back indoors.

Alex certainly noticed that Kara had started hanging out on the tower-top anyway, just to watch, which she had never done before.

James was not brought into the secret of the reading, though. The reading lessons remained Alex and Maggie’s, often before or after evening training. Maggie would smuggle out a ration, sometimes, and bring it to J’onn’s or Alex and Kara’s so they could all have dinner together. It was embarrassing, the first time, to see that Maggie felt the need to bring her own food to share when she was a guest in Alex’s home, but Alex also knew that chits they saved from not having to feed her were chits they could spend on other needs, so she accepted the contributions.

A few months after that first reading lesson, and a few weeks after James had started training with them, Alex was washing their supper dishes and Kara was hanging clean clothing on the rack to dry, when Kara said, “Maggie’s coming back.”

Alex looked over, asking with her eyes alone.

“I don’t know why.” Kara furrowed her brow. “Her heart rate’s up. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

They’d finished their evening training two hours earlier, and Maggie hadn’t stayed for supper. She might be coming for a reading lesson, Alex thought, but those usually happened on the evenings when she ate with them, or on days where Alex and Kara took part-days off from running the clinic. Still, Alex started rushing to finish the dishes faster.

Sure enough, Maggie knocked just a few minutes later, calling “Danvers?” softly through the door. Kara unlatched and opened it just in time for Alex to set the last dish to dry on the rack over the stove. When Alex looked up, Maggie was grinning ear to ear, eyes flashing with excitement. In her hand, she held a small… something, wrapped in paper.

“Oh oh oh, you have no idea what I’ve got for you guys!” she said, bouncing a little on her knees.

“Should I get J’onn?” Kara asked, and Maggie nodded excitedly. Kara slipped out the door and returned a moment later, J’onn following her. Maggie had taken a seat beside Alex and laid her paper package on the floor.

“Maggie,” J’onn smiled, “What brings you back?”

“Chocolate!” she blurted excitedly.

Alex frowned. It was a word she’d seen in books, and based on that, she knew it was something to eat. But beside her, Kara gasped, and J’onn said “Wow,” quietly.

Maggie clapped, giddy as a child, and leaned forward to open the paper. “Our traders got it. I don’t know how. I think the last time we got chocolate was… more than twenty years ago? I was, like, five or six, I think.”

“How did you get a whole bar?” J’onn asked.

Maggie lowered her voice. “I swiped it from the kitchen.”

“Maggie,” J’onn admonished.

“Oh, come off it,” Maggie smiled, backhanding him lightly on the knee. “We all got a piece with dinner and it was just… how could I not want to share it with you guys?” Her eyes flitted up to Alex’s and Alex felt her gut unexpectedly drop, her breath stutter in her chest for just a moment. She smiled.

“Well, do you want to do the honors?” Alex asked.

The bar had a pattern of squares imprinted into it. Maggie grinned and snapped a row off the end of the bar, and then snapped the row into its three squares. She handed one each to J’onn, Kara, and Alex.

“What about you?” Alex asked.

Maggie shook her head happily. “I don’t want to be distracted when I see how you react to this stuff. Go ahead, try it. Don’t swallow too fast. Just let it sit in your mouth.”

Alex bit off a corner, and heard the snap of breaking chocolate as Kara and J’onn did the same beside her. For a moment, she tasted almost nothing, as though she’d bitten off a piece of hard plastic. But then it began to soften, moulding to the surface of her tongue, coating it and spreading to the roof of her mouth, and the flavor was sweeter than almost anything she’d ever eaten, but it was also bitter, and it was rich. The scent of it wafted through her throat to her nose and she closed her eyes against it, as though she could contain it, contain the richness of the sensory experience by keeping her lips and her eyelids closed and using her nose only to draw the air she needed to grow the aroma.

But she was abruptly jerked out of the daze when, to her right, Kara suddenly sobbed.

Alex’s eyes shot open. She opened her mouth to speak and found it didn’t work quite right with the melted chocolate everywhere; wide-eyed, Maggie jumped up to grab a cup from the clean dishes and fill it from the waterskin by the door.

Kara was crying openly, the fingertips of one hand pressed to her lips and the other hand pressed down to her lap, clutching the second half of her chocolate square. Alex set her own chocolate down on the paper wrapper and put both arms around Kara, pulling her in, and Kara went willingly, sagging into Alex’s chest, into the kisses Alex pressed to the crown of her head. Maggie offered Alex the full water cup and Alex smiled in thanks, swishing and swallowing a sip before she tried to speak again.

“Okay,” Alex murmured into her sister’s crown. “Okay.”

Over the top of Kara’s head, Alex met Maggie’s mortified gaze. Maggie held up her hands, palms up, and shrugged, mouthing I’m sorry, but Alex just shook her head slightly. Maggie had done nothing wrong. J’onn squeezed Maggie’s shoulder and leaned closer to her, and Alex could tell that he was telling her just that, in very low tones.

But of course Kara could hear him. She sniffed harshly and sat up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Maggie, I’m sorry.”

“Kara, don’t apologise,” Maggie said softly. “I’m sorry.” But Kara shook her head, no, no, don’t be sorry, you don’t need to be sorry.

Alex pulled a clean rag from a basket behind her and handed Kara the rest of the cup of water. Kara drank, and wiped her eyes and nose, and settled back down into Alex’s arms.

“The last place I lived before I came here was a hospital,” Kara said. “Before that, I lived at home with my parents, and I was scared to go into the hospital and they--they gave me chocolate, to reward me for being good.”

“So the chocolate makes you think of the hospital?” Maggie asked gently.

Kara shook her head no against Alex’s chest.

“It makes her think of her parents,” J’onn said. Alex looked over at him. He had been so quiet since he’d come in. But now, she looked at him and she could see that his eyes were a little wet, too. “When she was young enough not to understand that she lived in a country at war, and that that war would take them from her,” he finished.

Kara lifted her head to look up at him. Wordlessly, and with a sad half-smile, she slipped out of Alex’s arms and crossed over to J’onn, leaning into his side. He slipped his arm over her, holding her firm and close. Both of them, as one, and without looking at the other, slipped the rest of their chocolate into their mouths.

“My daughters loved chocolate,” J’onn said, eventually.

Poor Maggie looked distraught, as though she had stumbled into an intimate moment where she didn’t belong, even though she’d inadvertently been its catalyst. Alex waved her closer, and then reached forward and broke another piece of chocolate off the bar and offered it. Maggie smiled and took it, and Alex ate the other half of her own square, which was every bit as delicious as the last bite had been.

“I should probably go,” Maggie said, when she’d swallowed. “Enjoy the rest of the chocolate.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to take it with you?” Alex asked.

Maggie shook her head. “I’m not supposed to have it. If I try to hide it in my locker or something, they’ll find it in a sweep. Just keep it away from the heat so it doesn’t melt.”

Alex nodded and slipped the rest of the bar onto a shelf away from the stove. She glanced over at J’onn and Kara, still leaning against one another quietly in the corner. “I’ll walk you down,” she said to Maggie, who smiled at her, relieved.

At the bottom of the tower, Maggie turned to face Alex. “I feel terrible,” she said. “If I--if I’d known they’d react that way…”

But Alex shook her head. “No,” she said, almost pleading. “That wasn’t sadness, from either of them. That was grief. We’re all… all three of us lost our families, you know, in different ways. Kara lost her parents, and J’onn lost his wife and daughters, and we all lost my parents who were the ones to bring us all together. We’ve done well together, the three of us, building something new, but it’s… it’s good, you know, to feel grief sometimes for the people we lost, because that means those people are still important to us even now that we’ve built a new normal without them.”

Maggie looked down and scuffed at the floor with her toe. It had rained the day before, and below them, the water rushed loud enough to be heard, the call of a night-bird echoing overtop. From somewhere on the Bridge, Alex could hear voices rising in song, and a sound that might have been someone tapping out a rhythm on a hand drum.

“My parents are still in my life and I never had siblings,” Maggie said, meeting Alex’s gaze again, “but I do know, a bit, what it feels like to lose someone.”

Alex hummed. “It sounds like you want to talk about it. We could go sit in the clinic, I think I have the key--”

“No, no, I should be heading back,” Maggie said, her reluctant half-smile hinting at her dimples and crinkling the edges of her eyes. “People will start to wonder where I went.”

“Okay,” Alex said, “but I’m here if you want to talk, you know.”

Maggie’s smile grew wistful, and she nodded. She took a deep breath, as though steeling herself for something--Alex’s eyebrows furrowed--and then she took a half-step forward and slipped her arms around Alex’s waist, pulling her into a full, warm hug.

Alex was so surprised that she froze for a second. She and Kara hugged all the time, and J’onn occasionally, but apart from that she’d hugged nobody in her life except for her parents and, she supposed, the Risen boy she’d spent that ill-advised night with.

When her muscles remembered how to work, though, it was easy to slip her arms over Maggie’s shoulders, to press the side of her face to Maggie’s hair and feel the point of Maggie’s chin hook over the muscle at the base of her neck. It felt warm, and safe, but nothing at all like it had felt to hug any of those other people. Most of the time, hugs happened for a reason: to say hello or goodbye, or to give comfort to someone in pain, or to express gratitude or happiness or excitement. But this was none of those things, the closeness feeling like an end in itself, the very fact of it being all that Alex wanted from it. It felt normal, to have Maggie against her like this. It felt somehow appropriate, that this body she’d spent so much time throwing around, and that had spent so much time throwing her around, would feel so natural, so perfect, against hers in this stillness.

They held each other until a gust of wind creaked the cables of the bridge, startling them. Maggie stepped back and looked away, flustered, and Alex wrapped her arms around herself to try to contain the warmth created by Maggie’s body. Maggie looked at Alex, and Alex looked at Maggie, and neither of them said anything, until Maggie half-shrugged, and gave another sad smile of farewell, and turned to walk away.

Alex watched her go, watched her hands tuck into her pockets against the chill, watched the slow measure of her steps walking away, and unlikely as it was she swore she could feel the echo of them up through her own feet.

She was speaking before she noticed she’d opened her mouth. “Maggie, wait.”

Maggie stopped, and turned, eyebrow cocked in silent question. Alex walked toward her: one step, another, then a third and a fourth and they were toe to toe, and Alex was not thinking, was refusing to let herself analyze before acting on the impulse to bring her hands to Maggie’s face, to cradle Maggie’s jaw, and from there to bring their mouths together.

Alex felt a shock, a weakness that began at her knees and worked itself in a wave through to the top of her head. Maggie leaned into the kiss, cradled Alex’s elbows in her palms. Alex tasted a vague, bitter aftertaste of chocolate and smelled river water and clean sweat, and knew that now that she’d had this she couldn’t imagine ever, ever letting it go.

But then Maggie pulled back suddenly, and when Alex opened her eyes she saw that Maggie’s were wild and panicked and ablaze.

“I can’t, we can’t do this,” Maggie croaked. “I’m sorry. You’re incredible and I’m so, so, sorry, but I just--we can’t.”

This time, Maggie left at a half-run, and Alex, with one arm wrapped around herself and the fingertips of her other hand pressed to her lips, watched her go.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Alex, is this about me? Did I scare her away by being a big crybaby?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG ELLIEC MADE MORE ART, THIS TIME OF MAGGIE AND HER CHOCOLATE BAR. IT'S IN THE COMMENTS OF THE LAST CHAPTER ASDFOISNGNODFKSLFNGIOGSHO I am actually dead and my zombiefied corpse is posting this chapter.

The next morning, James showed up alone for training.

And again, the day after that.

And after that.

By the end of a week, Alex knew that Maggie wasn’t coming back.

She wasn’t sick, or injured. Alex would still see her, sometimes, doing the drop, and climbing back up as smoothly as ever with as much weight as she always carried. Once, she thought she saw Maggie look in her direction, but Alex looked away before their eyes could meet.

At the end of two weeks, James showed up with a gallon of water in addition to the small sewing kit he’d told them, the day before, that he’d bring.

“It’s not much, I know, but I figured you guys were used to getting extra water so I thought--”

“You thought, or she thought?” Alex interrupted.

James clenched his jaw and was silent.

Alex continued. “If she’s training today, then she’s late, and that’s not like her. Is she training today?”

James drooped and shook his head _no_ , a little defeated.

“Alex--” Kara said, but Alex held up a hand, silencing her.

“If she’s not training with us, then that--” she pointed to the gallon-- “is charity. And if we need your charity--excuse me, _her_ charity--we’ll ask you for it. And we didn’t ask--”

“ _Alex_.” J’onn. “A word, please.”

Alex gritted her teeth and clenched her fist at James, but obediently went to speak to J’onn a few steps away.

“Get a grip, Alex. I don’t know what’s going on with Maggie any more than you do, but James was trying to do a nice thing.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “A fucking misguided thing.”

“Misguided, but nice,” J’onn acquiesced. “I’m okay with not taking the water, but let’s not scare James away, too. His trades are harder to get than water, anyway.”

“Who says we scared Maggie away?”

J’onn blinked at Alex, confused.

“You said, ‘Let’s not scare James away _too_.’ So you implied that we scared Maggie away.”

“No, Alex. I _implied_ that Maggie no longer trains with us, which appears to be true, and I implied that if we scare James, he’ll no longer train with us, either, and we’ll lose this lucrative trade arrangement. So if you can be an adult, take a breath and go clip in. And if you can’t, I’ll train with James alone and you can take the morning to get your head on straight.”

Alex rolled her eyes. She knew she was being childish, petulant, but somehow couldn’t stop herself. “Whatever,” she said, “let’s just go train.” She turned on her heel without preamble and reached to clip herself to the safety line. “Get into stance, Olsen, I don’t feel like dicking around today.”

The training went fine, and at the end, James took the gallon of water away with him. Alex was short-tempered all day at the clinic, though, managing to maintain her bedside manner but somehow unable to keep herself from being snide with Kara.

Alex trained one-on-one with J’onn that evening, and then was quiet and tense through supper while Kara and J’onn maintained forced, happy conversation while trying to cast discreet glances her way.

That night, Alex got tangled in her shirt as she attempted to change clothes for bed and let out a guttural growl of frustration, straining so violently against the twisted fabric that she heard the sound of something tearing.

Then there were Kara’s firm hands on her arms, steadying them, and Alex wilted under the touch. Wordlessly, Kara corrected the inside-out sleeve that had caused all the trouble, and waited while Alex slipped her arm through.

“You tore the seam of the other shoulder just now,” Kara said gently. “It’ll be easy to fix tomorrow.”

Fix, tomorrow, with the supplies from the sewing kit from James.

Alex pulled the shirt’s wide collar closed at the neck and looked down and away, ashamed. In the corner of her eye she could see the paper-wrapped chocolate still sitting on the shelf. They hadn’t touched it since that day.

“Alex.” Kara’s voice was quiet, but firm, and loving, almost mothering. “Why don’t you tell me what happened between you and Maggie that night?”

“Nothing.” Alex waved a hand dismissively.

“Alex, I could _hear_ you,” Kara said.

“Ugh, spy much?”

“I felt terrible for what I’d done, crying over Maggie’s gift, and I knew how that must look to Maggie. I wanted to know how to make it right the next time I saw her. Alex, is this about me? Did I scare her away by being a big crybaby?”

“Kara, no!” Alex turned and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders, holding her firm and steady. She thought back to that conversation and imagined what Kara had heard: the conversation about grief, and then Maggie saying _you’re incredible but I can’t do this_.

God, of _course_ Kara thought it was about her.

Kara was tearing up but making a valiant effort to contain it.

“Kara, no, it isn’t about you,” Alex repeated. She sighed and looked down, pinching the bridge of her nose and then running her fingers up through her hair. “It’s about me.”

“But she said you were--”

“I kissed her,” Alex blurted, eyes still downcast. “That night, I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and it was--for like five seconds, it was amazing. And then she said that she couldn’t do this, and she left, and she hasn’t come back since.”

Alex looked up at Kara nervously. Kara’s eyes were still damp and her mouth was open, partly covered by her fingers.

“Oh--Alex, I had no idea, Alex, I’m, I’m sorry, I--”

Kara reached forward and pulled Alex to her, into her chest that was always a little warmer than Alex’s, into her arms that were always much stronger than Alex’s. There, in the arms of the person who loved her most in the world, Alex finally broke down and started to cry.

 

\--

 

The next morning, she apologized to James.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I get it. Better than you probably think I do.”

Alex wondered if Maggie had told him what had happened.

“How is she?” she asked.

James shrugged. “Okay, I think. She’s been a little quiet lately.”

“Tell her--” Alex swallowed. “Tell her that she can come back. If, if she wants. Nothing has to change.” She glanced over at J’onn, who was watching her with worry in his eyes. “She doesn’t even have to bring water or anything.”

James passed a palm over his scalp. “I don’t know if I can convince her, but I’ll tell her.”

Alex nodded. It was all she could ask of him.

In her peripheral vision, Alex saw Kara smile in encouragement, and then turn her soft eyes to James. James’ eyes flicked toward Kara, too, and then softened.

When the morning’s training was done, and Alex and J’onn left the tower to climb down and open the clinic, Kara and James lingered a minute, behind them.

“Is there something going on between those two?” J’onn asked, barely audibly, when they’d reached the ground.

Alex glanced up and wondered if Kara’s superhearing was sensitive enough to pick up voices this low from this far away.

“Not that I know of,” she whispered, and then narrowed her eyes playfully. “Why? Preparing your ‘be good to her or I’ll throw you over the railing’ speech?”

J’onn, unexpectedly, guffawed. “I don’t need to prepare that speech. I’ve had a version of it ready since my eldest daughter was born.” He shook his head, smiling, but then his smile fell. “No. The Clans don’t generally approve of… fraternizing… outside the Clan. That’s all.”

Oh. 

_Oh._

Of course.

 

\--

 

J’onn’s elder daughter had been nine, when she died. The younger had been six. 

It was after Alex had lost her parents, and while she was still trying to forgive him for surviving, that he told her the story of how he came to live on the Bridge. He told her and Kara together over tea, at night, as fall turned into winter and the weather became too cold to train outside.

J’onn had been a soldier in the Leeside army, and a good one, who excelled not only in hand-to-hand combat but in leadership and general military strategy. He told them this not in self-aggrandisement, he said, but to make clear the value he bore as an asset to the military--the value that the military would kill for.

He’d been lackadaisical as a child, he said. A little too wild for his own good, until he joined the army and found that its structure and regulations were comforting, for him. He could follow those rules, he could excel within them, because they were clear and well-articulated. He joined as a common footsoldier but was quickly promoted, and eventually sent away to receive the further education he’d need to become an officer. He was enrolled at a university where he met M'yri'ah, the woman who would become his wife. She was the opposite of him: an artist, training to become a teacher, soft where he was rough, adaptable where he was rigid, but she’d loved him anyway, and he’d loved her more than he’d thought it possible to love anyone. They’d married, and she’d moved with him back to the base where she took a position teaching eight-year-old children. 

He went through his deployments. They were hard. He saw violence he’d never wished to see. But he held true to the idea that the country was under threat, and that if his nation did not rise up, they’d be destroyed.

Until the first time he saw one of his comrades shoot a child and her unarmed father.

Until the first time he heard one of his comrades blackmail a woman for sex.

The other side did the same, they would say. And that was true: he’d seen it with his own eyes, and would be forever haunted by his inability to stop it, even if there had been dozens, hundreds more occasions when he’d successfully intervened.

He was ordered to coordinate a unit to contain what he’d been told was a military base near the border. It was a key target: they wouldn’t bomb it from the air because of the intelligence contained within, which was apparently of great importance to the generals. He, himself, led a small team on recon. From afar, through binoculars, he watched the doors, peered through the windows--

Those were not military personnel inside.

They were children.

J’onn had heard stories that their enemies were experimenting with genetic enhancements of children.

(He glanced at Kara, then, who looked down and rubbed at one thumbnail with the pad of the opposite thumb.)

He’d heard stories that his own country was doing the same thing.

He looked down at his own hands, then.

After the primary reconnaissance mission, he returned alone, several times, observing carefully. He noted the code for the entrances to the front and back doors, the timing of the guard shifts and aerial patrols, the area where the fence had rusted enough to probably be penetrable without explosives.

He went back to the base, contacted his superior officers, and asked them about the children. They hadn’t seemed surprised, really, that he’d asked. They hadn’t ordered the recon, but they’d ordered him to run the op and they’d had to have known that that would involve recon. J’onn wondered, later, if that had been a test, on some level. He knew there had been buzz around him, stories about his potential to rise to the very top.

It hadn’t taken much for him to be let into the sanctum of secrecy: their intel had revealed that their enemies’ developments in human modification, in super-soldiers, were ages ahead of his own country’s. The children were the latest prototype. His generals wanted them captured for testing.

“They were talking about taking children who were already the victims of human experimentation and experimenting on them further,” he’d said harshly toward his own lap, his voice wet.

So he had refused.

That night, he’d snuck into the facility, by himself. The guard was low, and he was quiet. One soldier by one soldier, one scientist by one scientist, he worked his way through the building, disabling as many as possible, and, he admitted, killing a few.

There were twenty four children in that building, and he’d let them all out.

They had remarkable powers. Flight, fire, telekenesis, mind reading, no two of them identical. he’d liberated every single child, and once they were out of the facility he could see that they could fend for themselves. He saw adults rushing out to the street and racing, arms open, for the children, but he realized then that he hadn’t thought this through: they’d be recaptured, surely, or they’d kill to avoid it. But he’d done what he could do, alone, in the time available, and he’d do it again.

He was captured. All of his stealth, all of his silence, was only good until he’d completed his mission, but then the barracks of the city were brought down on him and he couldn’t fight an army by himself.

He survived imprisonment, survived the torture and revealed precious little information, but learned precious little in return. It took only a few months for him to be sent back to his country in a prisoner exchange--but his own allies, his former comrades, were far more ruthless. They debriefed him for hours, and he told them what he could, everything he’d seen, but admitted that it hadn’t been much, and the most useful information--the recon on the facility--was useless since he had liberated it.

They hadn’t believed him. They called him a traitor and a double-agent. A traitor he was. He would own that. But not a double agent. He would swear no greater allegiance to either side, any more.

His own side did not torture his body. They pried him for information he did not have, and when he failed to produce what they wanted, when he ran out of lies to keep them happy, they shot his family, one by one, and made him watch on a vidstream.

He escaped--and by this point in the telling, his face was wet, and Kara handed him a clean cloth from the shelf behind her--he escaped because two soldier, his previous subordinates, took pity on him, and freed him in the frenzy of a sudden firefight. Oh, how strange to be grateful for a firefight! And so he was a wanted man in both countries, a man with no more family to protect. And so, by cover of darkness he travelled on foot, first to his house to retrieve a few belongings and the books that he’d brought. And then, carefully, to the Bridge, where he’d escaped notice until he’d had to enter the wide empty space before the barrier gate, where he’d been marked for a fugitive and shot at and barely, by the skill and grace of the Danvers doctors, survived.

 

\--

 

Weeks passed, and the weather turned colder. It became too cold, in the mornings, to train on the tower, and too cold in the evenings, too. But winter brought more illness, and illness brought more work for Alex and Kara, and so what they lost in trade from James, they made up in extra chits.

After a week without training, Alex came home from buying soap from Armistice to find James sitting with Kara by the stove.

They held a book open between them.

“Hey, Alex,” Kara said, without looking up, which made James look up. He was slack-jawed, eyes wide.

“This is amazing. I never--this is amazing,” he stuttered.

Alex smiled at him tightly and breathed in sharply through her nose. “Kara--”

“Don’t even try it, Alex. You didn’t ask me before you started teaching Maggie.”

James spluttered loudly. “Maggie knows how to _read_?”

That surprised Alex. “She never told you?”

He shook his head.

Alex sighed. “Well, you guys get back to it. Scoot over a little, would you? I’ll cook.”

She bent to put the soap away on the shelf by the wash basin--

To find a package already there.

James glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Oh, I brought that. Not charity!” he insisted, holding a hand up in deference, “just a gift, from a friend.”

A friend.

James Olsen, their friend.

And so James began to visit almost every evening for reading lessons from Kara, or for card games with all four of them that they hadn’t been able to play in years. His gentle baritone became soothing, an unlikely comfort, in the periphery of Alex’s hearing when he and Kara were speaking in quiet tones over books while she cooked or cleaned up, or while she read while they cooked or cleaned up. If there was anything good to come from Maggie’s disappearance, it was that it gave Alex the opportunity to get to know him for himself, instead of as someone who was always overshadowed by Maggie in her mind.

So for the second? Third? Who-knew-how-many times in the past year, a new normal settled into Alex’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, you won't have to wait long to see Maggie and Alex reconnect. :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know she has feelings for you, too, right?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I get it! Not many people get excited about (read: comment on) chapters without Maggie in them now that you've gotten used to having her around. Alex feels your pain. So here, you can all have Maggie back :)

  
The winter brought sickness, which brought patients to the Danvers clinic. But it also brought sickness to the Danvers home.

Kara was resilient. Kara was immune to almost everything, and when she occasionally did get sick, she would get a day of sniffles from a bug that would floor Alex for three.

The bug that they caught nearly floored Kara for a day. Alex, however, was sure she hadn’t been this sick since… well. Since _that_ time.

Alex was afraid of illness but Kara was terrified of it, not in herself but in Alex. She got better but then threw herself into nursing her sister, into bathing and cooling her fevered body and feeding her sips of soup and into helping her contain whatever her body decided to excrete on any given day, and incinerating it right away in the compartment in the back of the stove, and then re-sterilizing the bucket. Kara forced J’onn to stay away, because Leeside vaccines and immunities he damned, she did _not_ want him catching this.

Their chits started to run low after three days of the clinic being closed. Alex was stable but not improving. She half-woke from a fever dream to hear Kara and J’onn speaking in low tones just outside the door.

“You have to reopen the clinic,” Alex croaked to Kara. “All your care won't help me if we can't get anything to eat.”

So Kara, reluctantly, did.

But later that afternoon, Alex woke from sleep to the sound of the door unlatching and a body, light, lowering itself to enter the room.

“Kara,” Alex rasped, “I told you…”

“It’s not Kara.”

Alex turned over and half sat up far too fast; the room spun and she groaned, collapsing back onto her mat.

“Oh, Alex,” Maggie murmured. There was a bucket nearby that Alex had been… using, but was too sick to stand up and dump it herself. Maggie didn’t flinch as she picked it up, emptied it into the incineration unit, and sterilized it with the hot wand that fit into an opening against the stove’s heating element.

Alex burned hotter with mortification that Maggie would do that, would handle her waste because she was incapable of doing it herself, but she had no fire in her then but the fire of sickness, and she couldn’t bring herself to resist. Maggie sterilized her hands with the alcohol gel on the shelf and then settled on her knees near Alex’s head. She reached for a dry rag from the stack and dampened it from the water in the pouch she brought with her. The cloth felt cool and soothing against Alex’s skin as Maggie gently wiped at her face, behind her ears, and down her neck.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Alex croaked. “You’ll catch this.”

Maggie shook her head softly. “I’ve already had it.” She reached into the pocket of her warm overcoat and pulled out a small tin canister that rattled when it moved, and set it down near Alex’s head.

“Antibiotics won’t help,” Alex said. “This is viral.”

“Those aren’t antibiotics.” Maggie reached for a cup, her down overclothes rustling as she moved, and twisted to fill it from the water pouch. Then she opened the canister and poured a few of the tiny brown pills out into her palm.

Alex blinked, struggled to focus. “Antivirals.”

Maggie nodded. She poured all but one of the pills back into the jar and then helped Alex to sit up, helping the pill and then the water to her lips, and Alex took both without resistance.

“Take them twice a day. You’ll start to feel better tomorrow.”

Alex lay back down, and Maggie pulled her worn blanket up to just under her chin.

“How did you…” Alex murmured.

“J’onn asked James, who asked me. He knew Luthor owed me a favor.”

“These pills come from Lillian Luthor?” Alex asked, trying for incredulous but just sounding plaintive.

“Not Lillian. Lena, her daughter. She’s a doctor too, you know. Good one. I helped her out of a bind once.”

Alex lacked the energy to respond to that, to ask any of the questions she wanted to ask.

“Alex, listen, I, I’m sorry,” Maggie stuttered, and Alex looked up at her, trying to focus.

“I was scared, so I stayed away for awhile. But by the time I was ready to come back, I was so embarrassed for how long I’d been away that--that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To face you again. So time got longer, and the hole got deeper and I couldn’t dig myself out of it.”

“‘S okay,” Alex murmured. “You’re here now. And I shouldn’t have… done that.”

Maggie smiled sadly down at her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Maggie’s cool fingers tucked another strand of Alex’s hair behind her ear.

“Would you stay with me for awhile?” Alex asked quietly. “I made Kara leave but… I hate being sick.”

Maggie nodded. She shrugged out of her coat, finally, and hung it on a hook by the door, and then settled down beside Alex, her back resting against the wall. With one hand, she reached for the box of books and felt around inside until she found the specific one she knew by touch, and pulled it out.

“Okay, I’m rusty at this, so don’t laugh at me,” Maggie said with a smile, opening the cover and flipping to the first page.

“‘All Tomorrow’s Parties,” she read, “by William Gibson.” She cleared her throat and began, slowly. “Chapter One, Cardboard City. Through this evening’s tide of faces unregistered, unrecognized, amid hurrying black shoes, furled umbrellas, the crowd desk-- no, descending like a single organi--organism?” (“Yes,” Alex murmured, “that’s right.”) “...into the station’s airless heart, comes Shinya,” Maggie paused, swallowed, squinted, “Ya-ma-zaki, his notebook clasped beneath his arm like the egg case of some modest but mod-er-ate-ly successful marine speck-eyes--species. Modest but moderately successful marine species.”

Alex had read this story a thousand times, could recite it from memory. But she sunk into Maggie’s voice, the throatiness of it, the warmth of it, and let herself be swept away, until somewhere into Chapter 2, she dozed off again.

When she woke up, an hour, maybe two later, Maggie was not there, and for a moment Alex wondered if she’d hallucinated the visit.

But there was a fresh gallon of water by the door, the bucket was empty and clean, and the canister of antivirals was tucked safely near the wall, next to the book.

 

\--

 

Maggie visited again the next day. The medicine had begun to work. Alex’s nausea had receded during the night, and she’d been able, in the morning, to sit up without getting dizzy and to eat small bites of the porridge that Kara made her before going down to the clinic.

When Maggie arrived, in the afternoon, another gallon of water in hand, Alex greeted her, and apologized for the idiot she assumed she must have made of herself the previous day.

“You were fine, Danvers,” she said, “the last thing you need to do is apologize to me.”

She picked up the book again and Alex lay down and closed her eyes and listened to her, not so much to the words as to the sound and timbre of her voice, slightly choppier in reading than in normal speech. It soothed her, somehow, so deeply that she didn’t notice when she started to sweat until she shifted in her bed and realized she was soaked. She groaned, inadvertently.

Maggie’s eyes shot up from the page. “What? Is everything okay? What can I--”

“It’s okay, Maggie, I’m okay.” Alex slowly sat up and pressed her palm to her own forehead. “My fever broke. This is a good thing. But now I’m…” she looked down at the large dark patches in her shirt, then pressed her palm to the damp sheets. “I need to change my clothes and clean myself up a bit.”

Maggie snapped to attention as though she’d been given orders, retrieving the wash basin and filling it with water to warm a little on the stove. Alex rose slowly, carefully to her knees and was pleasantly surprised that no dizziness followed her.

“Here,” Maggie said, “Let me help you. Can you let me help you undress?”

Oh, could Maggie help her undress. Not today, Alex thought. Not like this. Probably never. She reached for the pinned-back curtain and pulled it halfway across before flipping the bottom half of her sleeping mat up and out of the way. “I can handle this.”

Maggie cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

“Really, Maggie, it’s okay. If I need you, you’ll be right here.”

“I will,” Maggie confirmed. “Right here.”

The water in the basin was pleasantly warm, not hot, when Maggie set it in the corner for Alex to reach, along with a bar of soap. Alex undressed slowly behind the curtain, not wanting to push her luck too far, and felt, as she wiped herself down, that she was being cleansed of something far heavier than sweat and fever. Maggie pulled the damp bedding, careful not to lean beyond the curtain and encroach on Alex’s privacy, and then set a clean change of clothes where Alex could reach them. When Alex was dressed again, Maggie helped her empty the wash basin down the sewer line, and then convinced her to sit and rest against the wall while Maggie made her bed up again.

When Alex crawled back into it, she felt cooler, but swore that the bed felt warmer.

“Now,” Maggie asked, settling in with the book again. “Where were we?”

 

\--

 

Alex feared that once she was healthy, Maggie would disappear again.

They couldn’t train this time of year, of course, so Maggie had no reason, really to visit them, or to stay with them. But in the evenings, now, when James would sometimes stop by, Maggie would sometimes come too. There were fewer card games they could play with five than with four, but they managed. J’onn would often bow out, choosing to sit back and watch while the other four played. Sometimes he’d have something in his lap--some device or another that he’d been hired to fix. At first Alex had taken exception to it, had thought he felt a duty to exclude himself. But then she watched him--really watched him--while she was pouring more tea as Kara and James bickered over the finer points of some rule or another, and she saw in his eyes a warmth, and a pride, that she thought she’d never seen in him before.

Her love for him, for his constant presence and protection in her life for almost twenty years, was a quiet, permanent thing at the base of her heart, so normal that she sometimes forgot it was there. But it swelled, in that moment, for this kind man, the closest thing to a father she had left, who was loving feeling as though he could be a parent again for this family of misfits after having lost his own children.

From time to time Maggie and James would bring a portable vid-screen, and they’d huddle around it and watch some program they could pick up from Windside. Kara would smile and explain different things, sometimes translating the language if the actions didn’t make the story clear.

Maggie had asked Kara and J’onn if it would be okay to bring a vid-screen, back before she did it. Everyone knew it was to avoid a replication of the chocolate night. But J’onn had smiled and said yes, of course, he’d enjoy watching a vid or two, and Kara had squealed and clapped and exclaimed that she hadn’t gotten to watch one since she’d come to live on the Bridge.

Sometimes Maggie would come alone, without James. Maggie read the entirety of All Tomorrow’s Parties to Alex over several weeks, long after she’d stopped being sick. Alex shared the Leeside plant book with her, shared her dreams and visions about the world this book represented, and Maggie listened and played along, crafted an imaginary world and life alongside her that was green and lush and full of adventure.

It did nothing to change, or diminish, Alex’s feelings.

But she could live with it, she thought. She could live with this pit of longing, hard in her gut, if that was the price she had to pay for having friends.

 

\--

 

“Are you ever lonely, J’onn?”

She was holding tools for him as he inspected and reinforced the supports that fixed their homes to the tower side. In the winter, with all the freezing and thawing, it was an almost daily job. She was sitting on the roof of her home, and he was dangling beside it, both of them strapped into safety harnesses.

“I have you, I have Kara,” J’onn shrugged, glancing up from the bolt he was tightening. “I have James and Maggie, now, sometimes. I’ve always been a man who prefers the company of a small number of close friends. Hand me the screwdriver, would you?”

Alex did, and he began to loosen a worn-out screw to replace it with a new one..

“That’s not what I mean, though,” she said. “I mean are you ever… lonely.”

J’onn paused and looked up at her. She was looking out and away, up the river toward where it disappeared in a bend behind a hill, listening to the cold wind as it gently gusted past them, stinging her ears and making her nose run.

“Sometimes,” he said softly. “But I don’t… it’s hard for me to untangle the desire for… companionship from how much I miss my wife. Even if I were to meet someone, it’s hard to imagine that I could be good for her. I’m too… bound up in M’yri’ah, still, after all these years.”

“I think you could,” Alex said. “I think anyone would be lucky to have even a little piece of you.”

J’onn chuckled. “You’re biased. But thank you.” He finished replacing the screw, then set the screwdriver on the roof and hoisted himself up to sit beside Alex. Alex put the screwdriver into the toolbox and then looked out to the trees. She wondered, not for the first time, if she could find those trees in the book. She wished she’d known, during that one brief escape with Kara, to grab a leaf or two from different ones, to save and treasure and study and build imaginary worlds from. This time of year, of course, there were no leaves, the bare, spindly arms of the branches reaching longingly, desperately up into the sky.

“I don’t think you’re really asking about me right now,” J’onn said quietly, resting a worn hand on her shoulder.

Alex sighed and looked down. She didn’t deny it.

J’onn swallowed, calculating his words. “Maggie is a very lucky girl.”

“Maggie--what? I don’t know what you’re… Maggie, really?” Alex sputtered.

J’onn said nothing, but looked at her meaningfully, and Alex wilted. “Did Kara tell you?”

“No, Alex. She didn’t need to. I have eyes.”

The main Armistice housing complex was visible from where they sat, if they looked back over their shoulders and just a little bit down. It was near the center of the bridge: its warmest, most sheltered and stable spot. Alex imagined Maggie in there, wearing a green armband or a green kerchief or a green patch on her jacket, laughing with the rest of her team. They had dropped earlier that morning. Alex had seen them, bundled in the thermal layers that the job required this time of year and then making more runs because the bulk of the clothing reduced the weight they could carry. Maggie’s hair hung straight and loose below her black cap, the wind and the air moving it slightly, and even in the bulk of the winter garb she had looked built for this work, so natural and easy. Her posture, everything about how she carried herself in the harness, showed that she was smiling.

“Is it that obvious?” Alex asked.

J’onn laughed gently and draped his arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. “If only you could see yourself right now.”

They sat quietly together for a long moment.

“You know she has feelings for you, too, right?” J’onn said.

“Does she? Maybe? Sometimes I think she does. But we talked about it once, you know, and she said… well, let’s just say she said it won’t happen.”

J’onn hummed. “If she said ‘no,’ you have to respect it. That’s the first rule of not being a jerk,” he said, with a small laugh. Then he sobered. “And I’m sure she has her reasons. The Clans are strange in their boundary-building. But she looks at you like you hung the moon, Alex. If nothing else, it makes me happy that she sees you like you deserve to be seen.”

Alex blushed and looked down, letting her heels bounce lightly against the wall, the river glittering in the cold sunlight below them.

“I think we’re done out here,” J’onn said, finally. “Why don’t you come on into mine and I’ll make us some tea to warm up.”

Alex smiled, and nodded, and reached for the toolbox.

 

\--

 

The winter was short and mild. Alex was excited to go back to the tower-top to train, but at the same time sad to lose the evenings of card games and stories and reading lessons with James and Maggie that they all knew they’d no longer have time for when sparring season started up again.

J’onn announced, at one of their card nights, that tomorrow morning, barring an unforeseen overnight drop in the weather, they’d go up the tower again. James rubbed his hands together gleefully, and Maggie had playfully bumped Alex’s knee with the back of her hand and said, “You’re going down this time, Danvers, just you wait.”

Kara’s face twisted into something inscrutable.

“You should train with us,” James said to her. “Never too late to start learning.”

Kara laughed ruefully. “It’s not really my thing,” she said, and Alex’s heart broke for her. Because Kara would love sparring. Kara was a physical, tactile person--she always had been, since she arrived from Windside all those years ago. There was a violence to sparring, of course, and Kara wasn’t violent, but there was also an intimacy to it, a fitting of bodies together, that she would have thrived on.

But it was too dangerous. Kara could control herself, of course, but she couldn’t control her inability to bruise or be hurt. Maggie and James couldn’t know. It wasn’t that Alex, J’onn and Kara didn’t trust them. It was that they didn’t want to burden them with Kara’s secret, to give them knowledge that they would then have to protect from their own people.

But the next morning, when Alex and J’onn and Kara climbed to the top of the tower, Maggie and James were already there, Maggie with her gallon of unlabeled water, James with a bottle of hand disinfectant, smiling expectantly at them.

(Kara would tell Alex later that, yes, of course she’d known they were up there already, of course she’d heard them oh-so-carefully slip past their door to climb up the rest of the way, but she hadn’t wanted to ruin their surprise.)

“Think fast,” Maggie said, and then tossed the gallon toward Alex, who only barely reacted in time to catch it against her chest.

As though far away, Alex heard James ask Kara which one she was reading today.

“If this bag had broken, Sawyer, you’d have owed me a replacement by the end of the day,” Alex joked.

Maggie gazed up, as though wondering at the sky tapped a finger against her own smiling lips and stepped closer, slowly, “Man. Nothing I hate more than having to climb all the way up this tower to see you more than once in a day.”

Alex grabbed Maggie’s wrist and, in one clean sequence, had Maggie face-down on the ground, pinned under her weight.

“A winter off and suddenly you let your guard down?” Alex breathed, a little too close to Maggie’s ear.

She felt, more than heard, Maggie’s chuckle, the pulsing of air in her torso.

“How silly of me to forget,” she murmured.

Behind them, J’onn contained his grin on principle, but he couldn’t keep it out of his eyes. “Clip in,” he said, with forced gruffness, “We have to warm up properly in this weather before we start. Jumping jacks, go.”

And so began the spring.

 

\--

 

They slid back into the spring routine easily. Alex tried to remember what it had felt like to train alone, with J’onn, for all those years, and found that she couldn’t remember. They would rotate sparring partners now, all four of them, and Alex felt herself improve, felt herself learn how different body types and balances and sizes worked. Maggie had improved, too: had they met this year for a fight, as they had last year, Maggie would have held her own far more genuinely than she had that first time.

“Everything about this makes me happy,” Maggie said quietly, one evening, as Alex accompanied her down to the foot of the tower. “Thank you. For sharing your skill, and--and your life with me. With us.”

Alex smiled. “I don’t think I knew how lonely I was before you barged into my life.”

Maggie smiled back. “Likewise, Danvers. Likewise.”

 

\--

 

The pressure in the pit of Alex’s gut lifted, grew, expanded into a bubble that lived between her lungs, driving every inhale and exhale.

On some level, she knew she couldn’t live like this forever.

On some level, she knew that something would have to change.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The duffel bag had a thick, industrial zipper that clicked loudly as Alex opened it. She parted the flaps to see…
> 
> Rope?
> 
> Very, very large quantities of coiled-up nylon rope?
> 
> Maggie clapped giddily. “Won’t it be fun?”

Change happened a late spring evening, as Alex was cleaning up the clinic. They’d closed it at lunch time to all but emergency patients, devoting the afternoon to laundering and sterilizing their sheets and blankets and used tools.  James had stopped by, earlier, portable vid-screen under his arm, and Kara had squealed and clapped and Alex had told her to go ahead, go watch with him while she finished things.

That’s how she came to be alone when Maggie arrived unannounced at the clinic, opening the door without knocking and slipping stealthily inside. She had a large, bulky duffel bag slung over her shoulder, its green Armistice patch matching the one on the breast of her jacket.

Alex finished folding the last clean blanket and set it into the basket. “Maggie--what--”

“Happy anniversary!” Maggie grinned.

Alex furrowed her brow. _Anniversary_? It was a word that had come up in a book. J’onn had had to explain that an anniversary marked the moment in a year when a person, or people, would commemorate something that had happened in their lives at the same moment in a previous year.

“Or, I mean, pretty close, anyway,” Maggie clarified. “It was right around this time last year that you waltzed into Armistice when I was working the counter and I,” she waved her hand in the air for flare, “challenged you to a duel!”

Alex thought about the length of the daylight, and the trajectory of the sun and the stars. “Huh,” she said, “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right! So I was thinking, it’s been a whole year that you’ve been teaching me your secret amazing skills, with the fighting and the reading. And I thought, it would be pretty cool if I could teach you something, for once, right? But what on earth could I teach a fighter-doctor who can _read_?”

Maggie’s eyes were wide and mirthful, her dimples carving happiness into her cheeks.

“And then I thought-- _of course_ , what’s the one thing I’m really, really good at that you’ve never done?”

Alex could think of a lot of things, of Maggie’s warm personality and ease of telling jokes and her comfort in striking up conversations with strangers. But none of those things fit in a duffel.

With a flourish, she tossed the bag onto the floor. “I’m not technically supposed to have taken that,” she said, “so we have to be good to it. But go on, check it out.”

The duffel bag had a thick, industrial zipper that clicked loudly as Alex opened it. She parted the flaps to see…

Rope?

Very, very large quantities of coiled-up nylon rope?

Maggie clapped giddily. “Won’t it be fun?”

Confused, Alex pushed one of the coils of rope aside--and that’s when she saw the body harnesses, and the elaborate belay devices, and below that, the water pouches.

“You wanna drop with me?” Maggie asked, excited.

Alex had never even considered it. But now that she did: the exhilaration of the fall, the jolt of the rope catching her, the ability to reach down, to touch the crests of the river waves with her bare hands again, and, “Yes,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Okay,” Maggie said. “Finish up what you’ve got to do here, and let’s go.”

“What, right now?”

“Now or never. It’s dark enough that nobody will probably notice us, and I’m going to need to return that gear before the morning drop.”

Alex looked around. The chores were mostly done. She put away the rack where the blankets had been drying, then dusted her hands off against each other and shrugged at Maggie. “Lead on!”

They didn’t go far: just around to the back of the clinic.

“Nobody will notice us here, behind the tower,” Maggie explained, as she threaded an end of each rope through the belay devices and tied them securely to a railing support post. “It’s not like we need much space.”

Alex stepped forward and looked down at the water. It was dusk, nearing darkness, and it seemed so far away, even though she knew that from where they stood, the distance down to the surface was much shorter than the distance up to the top of the tower.

“All right, Danvers,” Maggie held up the body harness. “Let’s get you strapped in.”

_Oh, God._

The experience of Maggie’s hands guiding the harness straps into place, helping them lie flat and adjusting them to be snug but not tight, finding the fastenings and joining them, was the single most erotic experience of Alex’s life. Maggie’s fingers were steady and light and confident as they traced the lines of nylon and leather across her shoulders, hips, back, thighs, waist, chest. By the time Maggie had her set up, Alex’s legs were wobbly, her knees weak, her mouth completely dry, her heart pounding in her chest.

Maggie appeared not to notice as she strapped herself in, much more quickly and efficiently than she’d done for Alex.

“You good?” Maggie asked.

Alex swallowed. Swallowed again.

Maggie smiled sympathetically. “It’s the jitters. I still get them, every time. You just get better at working past them.”

Alex blinked. “Right,” she said. “Adrenaline.”

Maggie found the far end of each of their ropes and tied a knot a few feet in from the end. “Safety knot,” she said, “in case we lose control. Keeps you from sliding all the way off the end of the line. But ideally, you don’t want to hit it; it’ll give you whiplash like you wouldn’t believe.”

Then she picked up the belay pulleys, and clipped one onto Alex’s harness and the other onto her own. They had a handle on one side. Maggie grabbed hers and pulled it: it was a lever. “It’s basically a dead man’s switch,” Maggie said. “Hold this open, you’ll ride the line all the way down. If you let it go, though,” she did, and something in the belay snapped closed, “instant brakes, it’ll stop you right where you are. If you hit the point where you don’t want to go any lower, maybe you’re scared you won’t be able to climb back up or something, just release this, and that’s as far as you have to go. Okay?”

Alex nodded, but she smirked. “I’m going to touch the river,” she said.

Maggie grinned wickedly after her. “And on that note…” She reached into the bag and pulled out a one-gallon pouch--one of the ones with the patch ripped off that she used to bring water to the Danvers. “Clip this on,” she said.

Alex laughed, but took it. “Really?”

Maggie shrugged as she strapped an empty five-gallon to her back. “If I’m going to drop, I’m going to get water,” she said. “I’m taking it easy on myself. Only five gallons.”

Alex rolled her eyes and glanced down at the one-gallon bag on her hip. “Show-off.”

Maggie smirked. “Last thing: when it’s time to climb up, flip this little switch, see?” She pointed to a small lever on the side of the pulley. “It reverses the wheels so the rope goes back through the other way, so you can climb back up.”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded, wiping her clammy palms against the sides of her pants. Maggie tossed her a glove to protect her rope hand, and then said, “Okay! Over we go.”

Stepping over the railing was easy.

Letting go of the railing was not.

Maggie stood beside her, their arms brushing, and said, “On the count of three, we’re going to sit back in the harness, okay? It’ll catch you. One, two, three!”

Alex held her breath and sat back--and the harness caught her.

“Toss the long rope down,” Maggie instructed, and Alex did, watching until its tail end splashed lightly into the tip of the surf.

“Doing okay so far?” Maggie asked. Alex inhaled shakily, and nodded.

“All right. Nothing left but the big jump. There’s the second level of the Bridge below us, so as we jump, push hard off your feet to make sure you don’t bump anything on the way down. You good?”

Alex remembered that day, more than half her life ago, when she’d seen Maggie make her first drop: it had been grey, the air damp and heavy. Less than an hour later, a bloody Kara would burn a hole into the clinic roof. She had been so young, then. She’d still had both her parents.

Maggie as a child had overcome this terror, the biologically-driven urge to haul herself back up and over the railing and onto firm ground.

Alex could overcome it too.

“Ready,” she said.

“Okay. One hand on the rope, other on the handle.”

Alex did as she was told.

“And three… two… one… go!”

Alex kicked off the ledge as hard as she could as she jerked the handle open, and she was falling.

Or flying? She cleared the lower level of the bridge, the hum of the rope whizzing through the pulley blurring with the sound of the rushing air in her ears. She had expected to feel something inside, a drop or tug of her gut, but she didn’t; she felt weightless, like she was floating, like she had felt at no moment in her life but that moment that Kara had picked her up and jumped off the top of the tower, spinning them off into the great unknown for an hour of freedom.

Freedom like this, that she felt right then, and--

“Alex!"

She startled and, fortunately, her instinct was to release her handle, her body jolting to an almost instant halt--she glanced down--five or six feet above the water surface.

“Danvers,” Maggie grinned, a foot or two below her. She kicked her legs and it made her twist and wobble playfully on the end of her line. “You eat a bug or something on the way down, with that face?”

Only then did Alex feel her grin, so broad it almost hurt. Her fingers prodded into the muscles of her jaw. “What? No, I just, that was amazing--”

“I’m teasing,” Maggie laughed. “You’re a natural. You did great. Now just hold the rope and work the handle slowly to lower yourself down to where you can reach, then un-clip your pouch and fill it up.”

Alex bit her lip and followed Maggie’s instructions as Maggie did the same beside her. Reaching down to fill the pouch was the hardest thing, the balance of her body weight tipping until her legs felt like they were kicking up at the sky.

The Bridge towered above them, so far and so vertical that, no matter how carefully she searched and squinted, she could not make out the light of her home or J’onn’s.

“It’s incredible from down here, isn’t it?” Maggie said.

“Yeah,” Alex breathed.

“I forget sometimes… I’m so used to seeing it from this angle. It’s nice to be here with you. It makes me see it like it’s new again.”

Alex hummed. The water pouch was still empty, dangling in her hand, as she stared up the length of the bridge tower toward the emerging stars.

“Earth to Danvers,” Maggie said gently, after a long moment had passed. “I hate to break your moment, but it’s a long climb up, especially the first time. So you should probably start filling.”

Alex nodded and unscrewed the pouch, slipping the loop on the cap over her fingers to keep from dropping it and then reaching down to catch the current in the open mouth. Maggie had already filled hers and was capping it.

It took more strength and leverage than Alex suspected to hoist her full pouch out of the river and up to her hip. Her legs flailed, trying to balance, and her arms flailed in the other direction, water surging out of the still-open mouth of the pouch and splashing across Maggie’s face and chest.

“Oh no! Maggie, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do that, it was an accident--”

Maggie spluttered, clearing water from her mouth, and narrowed her eyes at Alex. Alex felt her mouth work soundlessly, feeling for more apologies as Maggie wordlessly reached down, down, down toward the River waves and--

Sent a splash of water flying into Alex’s face.

Now Alex spluttered. “You did _not_.”

So, of course, Maggie, shit-eating grin firmly in place, did it again.

Alex reached down and sent another splash Maggie’s way. And somehow, suddenly, they were howling with laughter, legs kicking in the air as they splashed at one another until they were both heavily, thoroughly soaked.

Maggie was the one to finally relent, sagging back in her harness and breathing deeply to calm her giggles, and Alex did the same. When Alex had caught her breath, she reached down with the now only half-full water pouch and began to fill it back up. 

“Man,” Maggie laughed, “the climb back up is going to _suck_ with this much water-weight in our clothes. This is not a gentle way to lose your virginity, Danvers.”

God, it was such an indirect reference to sex--a juvenile metaphor--and yet Alex’s heart raced with it. Wordlessly, she screwed the cap back on her pouch and clipped it to her hip. She licked her lips, licked the water there, and followed the upward line of the rope with her eyes. “Well, let’s get to it, then.”

Maggie explained to Alex how to wrap the rope around one leg and then grip it between her calf and the sole of her foot to have leverage to climb up. The belay device helped: she flipped the switch to change the direction of its pulleys, so they’d lock up and hold her in place if ever she began to slip down. It was a slow, steady climb, Maggie coaching her from her own rope. Watching Maggie climb at this pace was like watching an adult crawl alongside a baby: cute but awkward, and Alex was grateful for it all: for her patience, and for her invitation to try this in the first place.

At the top, Maggie hauled her five-gallon pouch over the railing and then hauled herself over, and then reached down and, with surprising strength, hauled Alex up onto the ledge so that Alex could swing a leg over. Back on solid ground, Alex’s legs wobbled and her calves trembled from the thrill and the adrenaline and she would have fallen to her knees had Maggie not caught her with a firm hand around a biceps.

“Yeah, that happens, the first time or two,” she said. “I’ve got you. Your legs’ll come back in a sec.”

She was right, they did, and Alex was left with a high, a euphoria, the likes of which she’d never before experienced. She was soggy and cold but barely noticed it as she and Maggie laughed and joked while they hauled their ropes up, coiled them, and tucked them back into the duffel. Alex took the duffel in one hand and her hard-earned gallon in the other and led Maggie and her five gallons through the dark of the Bridge back to the clinic.

The bridge was calming, settling into night, and when Alex closed the clinic door behind them, for all the energy of the evening, the world felt still and quiet.

“I can’t go back to Armistice wet like this,” Maggie laughed, “they’ll all want to know what happened.” But there was a tremble in her voice: the chill was catching up, and she was shivering. Alex glanced down at her own hands, one free and the other still clutching the bag, and saw that her fingers and knuckles were white with cold. She imagined her lips were probably doing the same.

The duffel thunked to the ground, the metal pieces inside clinking lightly, and Alex fired up the stove. The drying rack stood folded against the wall where Alex had tucked it earlier; she unfolded it again, its greying plastic-covered rungs creaking against one another like so many skeleton bones. From the basket in the corner, she pulled two of the warmest, least-worn blankets, stiff from their recent wash, and tossed one to Maggie. Maggie had set her five gallons down by the doorway and was standing still, shivering slightly.

“Get out of your wet clothes and wrap up in that,” Alex said. “If you hang your stuff, it won’t take long to dry once the stove heats up.”

Maggie’s eyes shifted from the rack, to the blanket in her hands, to Alex, but she didn’t move. The smile that she’d worn all evening had fallen, and her eyebrows had drawn together.

Alex had begun to tug at the fastenings of her own harness, but she paused when Maggie didn’t move. “Is everything okay?”

Maggie chuckled noncommittally and half-shrugged. She tried to tug her fingers through her hair, but they snagged in the damp knots near the tips. “This doesn’t feel like such a great gift, anymore,” she said.

The words struck with something like violence. Alex postured defensively, a hand on her hip. “What are you talking about?”

Maggie demurred almost immediately. “I’m sorry. I just--I know how hard you have to work for things like power. You wouldn’t have the stove on in here right now if I hadn’t gotten us both soaked.”

“Are you pitying me, Maggie? Because I don’t like it.”

“No. No, Alex. I… I can’t imagine what it would feel like, to have to go it alone like you do. I just…” She began to tug, absently, at her green wristband, one finger slipping under the damp fabric as though to give her skin room to breathe. “Sometimes I’m so jealous of your freedom. You can… you know how to do so many things. You can cook, and I’ve never cooked in my life. And you’re a doctor. And you can fight like some kind of avenging angel. And you can _read_. And like, if you have to tell anyone where you go or what you’re doing, it’s J’onn or Kara, and it’s only because they want you to be safe, not because they have some kind of… I don’t know, principled idea of what you should be doing and who you can talk to, you know? Nobody gives you shit for spending time with me, but James and I get so much grief for hanging out with you guys.”

Alex softened, hand slipping from her hip to dangle at her side. She nodded.

Maggie continued: “But then I think, I don’t know what it would be like to have to trade for every ration, for every unit of power or gallon of water. I just show up at the canteen and they give me my meals, I flip a lightswitch in the hall and the light comes on. Our old timers don’t work, you know? We just take care of them and let them take it easy.”

Retirement had always been something that other people got to do, in Alex’s mind. She’d never felt deprived by the knowledge it wouldn’t be in her future. The idea of rest in her old age was never part of her image of her own life.

She sighed. “We’re fine, Maggie. Sometimes we’re more fine, and sometimes we’re less fine, sure, but right now, we’re more fine. If we couldn’t afford to power the stove for a few more hours today, I wouldn’t have turned it on. Okay?”

Maggie’s mouth worked for a minute, but then she shrugged, and she nodded. As if on cue, a cold shudder ran through her body.

“Get out of those clothes,” Alex said firmly, and turned her back to start undressing. A few seconds later, she heard Maggie shuffle around, and then the rustle of fabric as she began to undress as well.

Alex would tell herself, later, that she hadn’t meant to do it. She had assumed that Maggie, with so much more experience getting in and out of drop harnesses, would have undressed faster than she had; she had not guessed that Maggie would have taken such care to fold and gather her wet clothes in a tidy stack when Alex herself had just dropped them--she’d just be picking them up, a moment later, to hang them, anyway. She had her blanket wrapped around herself, and half-turned as she bent to begin gathering her things--

To be met with the sight of Maggie, facing away, tugging her shirt off over her head.

Maggie’s back was broad and strong, almost masculine, the pronouncement of the muscles of her shoulders and neck and along her ribs ( _deltoid, trapezius, latissimus_ , whispered the doctor) drawing lines that tapering down into a narrow waist and then flaring out into an oh-so feminine angle of the hips, disappearing, there, into the folds of blanket slung low, resting over the curve of her ass.

And that, in itself, would have been enough to haunt Alex for days.

But also: in perfect, fine, black lines: a fish, viewed from above, as long as her spine and parallel to it, as though it were swimming out of the blanket and up to hide in the damp strands of Maggie’s hair.

Alex gasped. Maggie froze.

“I’m sorry,” Alex murmured, “I didn’t mean to, I thought you were already…” She closed her mouth, tried to let it wet itself, but her tongue felt like sandpaper brushing against a plaster palate. She stood slowly and tried again. “Your tattoo is beautiful.”

Maggie let her shirt fall from her hands, an unkempt knot on top of the neatly-folded pile, and tugged up the edges of her blanket to cover her chest, leaving it slung low in the back. She glanced at Alex out of the corner of her eye, over her shoulder, and pulled her hair out of the way: a silent invitation to look closer.

Alex was too weak not to take it.

“I forget it’s there sometimes,” Maggie said quietly. “James designed it for me. I’ve always… I, I don’t know,” she stuttered bashfully. “It feels so… cheesy. The River frees us, and it contains us. Same thing with fish. But them, they leap in it, they thrive in it, while us, our lives are shaped by all the ways we’re trapped.” She shrugged, and the fish shifted higher into her hair, then dropped again. I try to remember to find my freedom where I can, I guess.”

“But it’s on your back,” Alex murmured. “How does it help you remember if you can’t see it?”

Maggie shrugged; the fish jumped. “I didn’t really think it through when I got it,” she said, with a rueful laugh. “But it’s probably a good thing I can’t see that reminder all the time. I’d start obsessing over the things I can’t have.”

When Alex slipped her hand out through the opening in her blanket-cover and traced the fish’s dorsal fin, she didn’t intend it to be a response to what Maggie had said.

She didn’t intend it, but it was, all the same.

Maggie’s breath hitched, her muscles twitching. The tattoo was well-done, no scarring or texture to its lines. Alex saw--but tried not to notice--the goosebumps that rose in Maggie’s skin in the trail of Alex’s fingertips, like a wake in the water.

“Sorry,” Alex said, pulling her touch away, “my hand must still be cold.”

Maggie turned to face her. One hand clutched the edges of her blanket to her chest. The other dropped her hair back over her shoulder, down her back.

“It wasn’t,” she breathed. She glanced at Alex’s lips, then at her eyes, and Alex found she couldn’t move, could barely breathe, as though the air around them had locked her into place.

And then Maggie laid her palm along the curve of Alex’s jaw, fingertips sliding into the damp roots of Alex’s hair, and guided their mouths together.

This was nothing like the moment they’d shared that night outside the clinic, all those months ago. That kiss had felt sudden and overwhelming, like the crash of a wave, but this one felt steady and inevitable, like a current. Maggie stepped into Alex’s body and their forearms crossed each other like swords where their hands clutched their blankets in place. Maggie’s hand was warm and encouraging on Alex’s jaw, and Alex curled her free hand over Maggie’s shoulder. Their lips came together over, and over, and over again, and then they were kissing deeper, gentle tongues and open mouths and the soft, gentle puffs of Maggie breathing through her nose against Alex’s cheek.

Alex was the one to pull away, not far, just enough to tug her blanket tighter around herself and lean her forehead down against Maggie’s.

“Tell me this won’t be like last time,” she breathed.

“It won’t,” Maggie said, with conviction.

“What changed?”

Maggie closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, holding her lip in her teeth.

“I feel like you’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted,” she admitted, “and you want to be here with me and I… I don’t want to be afraid of that anymore.”

It was good enough. Alex tipped her head down and kissed Maggie again. And again. And again.

They found their way to the mat by the wall and half-stumbled down onto it, Alex landing above Maggie, catching herself with a hand to keep from colliding fully. But Maggie reached up and pulled her down and Alex went willingly, feeling the fit of their bodies together, the warmth of it, as Maggie coaxed Alex’s lips down her jaw to her ear, her neck, her throat. With a groan, Maggie surged up and turned Alex onto her back, pausing there, a thumb tracing the peak of her cheekbone.

“I don’t want to stop tonight,” she confessed quietly. Her hand skipped down to Alex’s shoulder, thumb tracing over its curve and down the length of her arm, her eyes following it, and then flitting back up to Alex’s, “unless you do, and then we will. But I don’t want to stop.”

Alex felt gooseflesh rising in the wake of Maggie’s touch and leaned up to kiss her. _Take your freedom where you find it_. Against her lips: “I don’t want to stop either.”

So they didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, everyone, for humoring my comment fishing expedition last chapter. You're the best.
> 
> Friends, an apology in advance: I won't be able to update this fic again until early July. I'm sorry. I've had something come up with work. It's an exciting opportunity for me, but I'm going to have limited internet access and be crazy busy, and my only computer will be my work laptop and I won't use that to access anything NSFW (because, yes, the next chapter will be NSFW :-) ).
> 
> But I like the idea of leaving Maggie and Alex here for this brief hiatus, finally in a place where they both want to be.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so what followed was a night of discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

In all her months of longing, Alex had never imagined what kind of lover Maggie might be. Wondered, yes, but not imagined: her frame of reference was too narrow to craft images in her mind.

And so what followed was a night of discovery. Maggie was almost overwhelming in her gentleness, her tenderness. Without breaking apart, they managed to roughly lay one blanket out below them, the other draped across Alex’s back to cover them both, and whenever it began to slip down Maggie would catch it and tug it back up over Alex’s shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Alex murmured. “You can let it slip. I’m not cold anymore.”

Maggie blushed. “I know, it just… feels nice. To have it between us and the world.”

Alex’s heart jumped and fluttered and she bent down again to kiss Maggie harder, deeper, closer, Maggie’s hands following the lines of Alex’s ribs to pull their bodies tighter together inside their cocoon of blankets. Maggie’s hand slipped into the tight space between them, where their breasts were pressed together, to touch and tease at Alex’s nipple and Alex could not help the way all the air rushed out of her lungs. Alex’s hand found Maggie’s hip, her thigh, and guided their legs to interlock, fitting their bodies even closer, still.

Eventually, of course, the blanket was allowed to slip away. Alex learned that Maggie liked to discover her body with her mouth, warm lips and wet tongue tracing reverentially across her skin, doting on the places Alex would expect--her mouth, her neck, her breasts, the expanse of her stomach--and places she wouldn’t--the lines of her palms and the soft skin between her fingers, the ticklish insides of her elbows, the points of her shoulders and her hips. Maggie made Alex come with a steady, firm tongue and then kissed her way back up her body, prying Alex’s fist from the blanket it clutched and opening it to press damp lips to each fingertip in turn.

Alex learned she liked to discover Maggie’s body with her hands and her eyes. She imagined the tips of her fingers like drops of water, finding the fall lines of Maggie’s body, gathering in each groove and hollow and following it to the next. She watched those lines as she watched Maggie’s body and face, and found responses in expected and unexpected places: Maggie stretched her hands over her head and sighed when Alex’s fingers skimmed her underarms, her hips jerked when Alex touched the back of her knee; she arched and gasped when Alex tugged gently at her nipples, fell open easily when Alex followed the crease of her hip to the soft skin of her inner thigh. When Maggie fumbled down to guide Alex inside her, Alex gladly followed, cradling Maggie’s head with one hand as the other sought the angles and pressures of thumb and fingers that would bring Maggie the most pleasure. She tipped her head close, their foreheads almost touching, Alex’s breath quietly catching and twitching in sympathy with Maggie’s. It was not frantic: no flailing motions, no ferocious bucking of bodies. It was almost still, the tension in Maggie building in tight shivers and vibrations, until Maggie’s head suddenly turned and she closed her mouth around Alex’s thumb just before she arched, thighs twitching erratically at Alex’s hips, insides clenching at Alex’s fingers. When Maggie finally gasped in a breath, Alex’s thumb still held lightly between her teeth, Alex did the same, unaware that she’d even been holding it.

 Alex shifted, began to slip her fingers out but Maggie reached down and held them in place.

 “Just another minute,” Maggie whispered. “You feel perfect.”

So Alex held her hand still and stretched her body along Maggie’s, fingers of her other hand toying with the strands of Maggie’s hair.

Eventually, they looked over and realized they’d never hung their clothes. They stood up, both unapologetically naked this time, and moved everything from the piles on the floor to the drying rack, and then slipped into the blankets again. They sunk wordlessly into more kissing, more touching.

There was a small gap below the door, and through it, Alex could see the light was beginning to grow again by the time they got up. Dressed in now-dry clothes, green wristband on, with her duffel bag in hand, Maggie stepped into Alex’s body and pulled her into a slow, sweet kiss.

“I have to get back,” she whispered. “I wish I didn’t have to leave.” 

Alex smiled sadly. “I know. Just--” she closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. “Is this a one-time thing? Because I understand if it is, but--but I want--”

Maggie silenced her with another kiss. “I don’t know what today’s going to bring,” she murmured, “Or tomorrow, or the next day. But I don’t want this to be a one-time thing, either.”

Maggie slipped out the door. Alex turned off the stove and checked the meter, noting that she would, after running it all night, need to buy more power units today after all. She soaped and washed her hands and face, put away the drying rack, tossed the blankets into the laundry basket (was it pathetic that she wanted to keep one of them, take it up and sleep under it in her bed for a night or two?), and wiped the mat with disinfectant, and then locked up and climbed back up to her home.

“Hey.”

Kara, to Alex’s surprise, was awake, lying on her side and looking at her.

“You heard,” Alex realized.

Kara smiled without malice. “It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known I didn’t need to go looking for you. J’onn was worried.”

Alex groaned. “What did you tell him?”

“That you were with Maggie. I didn’t tell him anything more than that, but I think he might have figured it out on his own.”

Alex sighed, and went to flop down on her bed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Honestly, I can hear at least two couples having sex at any given time, if I pay attention. I’ve gotten pretty good at tuning it out.”

Alex flung an embarrassed arm over her eyes.

“Plus you two were a lot less ostentatious than a lot of--”

“Okay! Okay,” Alex said. “Can we just… pretend you  _ didn’t _ hear? Please?”

Kara chuckled, and propped herself up on an elbow. “Yes. But we can’t pretend that I don’t know that you slept together.”

Alex rolled over and buried her face in her pillow.

“Seriously, Alex.” Kara’s voice gentled. “How are you?”

Alex peeked out from the corner of her eye. Kara’s face was soft and open, and Alex realized suddenly that she did, in fact, want to talk about this.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly, settling onto her side. “Happy? She’s just, she’s so…” she swallowed hard and felt that pleasant tension swelling just below her lungs. She pressed her fist there. “But also nervous. Very nervous.”

Kara smiled. “That makes a lot of sense to me.”

They lay quietly, Alex slipping in and out of sleep, until Kara said, “Sounds like only James coming up for training this morning.”

Alex, tired after her sleepless night, could only grunt. A few minutes later, she heard J’onn’s door open, and the scuffle of his boots as he grabbed the rope to climb to the top of the tower, followed by the shuffle of Kara’s blankets and the creak of the book-box as it opened and closed.

“I’ll tell them they’re training without you this morning,” she said. “Get some sleep before we open the clinic.”

“Thanks,” Alex murmured, only half awake.

“Sure. Oh, and Alex?”

Alex opened her eyes to see Kara smirking down at her. 

“Don’t forget to clean yourself up before you come down to work.”

Alex grabbed the nearest soft object she could reach -- a pair of clean socks -- and hurled it at her sister, who grinned and tugged the door shut just in time for the socks to bounce off of it.

 

\--

 

When Alex was on her way down to the clinic, she happened to spot Maggie just as she was pulling herself up to the top of her climb and heaving her haul over the railing.

She imagined the way the fish would flutter over the moving muscles of Maggie’s back, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!
> 
> I did some thinking about this fic while I was away and came up with some ideas for improvements for the later chapters, so I"m going to slow my posting rate a bit from what it was before to give myself some time to implement my changes. But I wanted to post this little interlude because y'all have been so patient.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it continued, into the bend of fall into another winter and into another spring, as Alex fell deeper and deeper in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

The evening after Alex’s night with Maggie, after the last patient had left the clinic, Alex shooed Kara away and offered to tidy by herself, hoping that maybe… if she were lucky…

She was. The door groaned open, and creaked shut again, and then two steps and a strong arm around Alex’s waist and then a kiss, warm and almost familiar, that Alex fell into, driving fingers into long, black hair.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Maggie breathed when she finally pulled back. “I nearly lost a five-gallon into the river on the afternoon drop because I had a flashback to last night while I was filling it.”

Alex hummed, and grinned into the next kiss, and reached down to tug at the fastenings of Maggie’s pants.

It was quick, and started cramped, and ended with Maggie leaning against the wall with her pants tugged down to her thighs, and Alex kneeling in front of her, Maggie’s fists clenching and unclenching in her peripheral vision. Maggie sagged into the wall, but tugged Alex up into a wet, open-mouthed kiss before Alex could even wipe her lips on the back of her hand.

“Can I come up with you?” Maggie asked when they pulled apart, foreheads resting together. “I have a ration to share. Dried mushrooms. You soak them in water for a bit and then cook them and they’re delicious.”

Alex couldn’t stifle her grin. She didn’t want to. She’d wondered what might happen today--whether Maggie might have a change of heart, or whether their relationship might turn into something that was mostly about sex and sparring and not about reading and eating and games with Kara and J’onn and James.

She playfully reached down and pinched Maggie’s bare ass, and Maggie yelped, and then laughed. “Get decent,” Alex said, “And I’m going to, um,” she wiggled her fingers and then gestured vaguely at her own mouth, “and then we can go up.”

They dropped the mushrooms off with Kara on their way to the top of the tower. James and J’onn were waiting for them, and they trained until Kara came up and told them supper was ready.  When they sat near the stove, Maggie slipped herself between Alex and James, edging him over to make room. His eyes narrowed a bit, and his jaw clenched. Alex noticed. She noticed, but how could she care when Maggie was leaning close to her, nudging her with her shoulder, gracing her wrist and forearm and knee with occasional gratuitous touches, sharing with her this perfect, casual intimacy in front of the people important to her?

At the end of the evening, when Maggie and James slipped out the door, Alex slipped out with them, and Maggie cleared her throat and said to James, as lightly as she could, “You go ahead. I’ll be another minute.”

James glanced at Alex, and then smiled tightly at Maggie. “I’d like to walk with you.”

Maggie’s smile stretched into something forced. “I… okay. I’ll meet you at the bottom, then.” Her eyes flitted to Alex, who hovered in the still-open doorway, and back to James. “Just give us a sec?”

James swallowed, and smiled again -- but this time it was genuine. “Yeah, okay. I’ll meet you down there.”

As he climbed down the ladder, Alex slipped out and closed the door behind her, and she and Maggie knelt together on the small platform between her home and J’onn’s, above the down ladder and below the rope that went to the top of the tower. As soon as James turned a corner and dipped out of sight, Maggie reached over and pulled Alex into a soft, sweet kiss. 

“Is everything okay with him?” Alex asked, when they parted.

Maggie nodded and shrugged. “He worries. I’ll talk to him, tell him to stop making it weird.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Maggie punctuated the conversation with a final peck. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” And she slid to the ladder and began her climb down.

Alex couldn’t wonder for long about Maggie and James’ conversation because she was met with J’onn and Kara’s intent gazes when she slipped back inside.

“Don’t make it weird,” Alex said, echoing Maggie, before they could speak.

J’onn shrugged. “You need to take your happiness where you find it, Alex.”

Kara nodded. “We’re both happy for you.”

“And a little worried,” J’onn amended. “But you know what you’re doing. Right?”

Alex dipped her head noncommittally. “I can live with the not-knowing.”

“Alex.” Kara reached forward and squeezed Alex’s shoulder. “If she pulls one over on you, I will break every rule we’ve ever set to make sure she regrets it.”

J’onn laughed drily. “I won’t even pretend to try to stop her.”

Alex smiled and wondered about James’ clenched jaw and too-wide smile.

 

\--

 

Whatever James said to Maggie, it didn’t deter her from arriving early for training the next morning. Kara heard her coming and shooed Alex up the tower early enough to meet her. They knelt together on the concrete, low enough to be out of the line of sight from the ground, and shared giddy good morning kisses in the sunrise. When James arrived, they were sitting and admiring the reflection of the sky in the water as it moved from black, into the silver-grey of dawn, and toward the blue of daylight. He squeezed Alex’s shoulder warmly, and his smile, when he offered it, held none of the previous day’s tightness.

“See?” Maggie whispered, as she stood and helped Alex to her feet, “Told you I’d set him straight.”

Alex’s body hummed so brightly around Maggie that morning that she partnered with J’onn for training, certain that if she tried to spar Maggie, one of them would end up injured due to their own inattention. 

“You’re glowing, Alex,” J’onn teased afterward. “Your  _ fighting _ is even full of happiness.”

That night, Kara left the clinic right after closing without having to be asked. Sure enough, Maggie slipped in a moment later, and this time it was Alex who came hard against Maggie’s fingers, kneeling on the mat with her back pressed to Maggie’s front and Maggie’s hands up her shirt and down her pants and Maggie’s breath in her ear.

Alex sparred James that evening before supper.

And so it continued. As the days turned warmer, the early passion of their encounters cooled just enough to leave space for a different kind of intimacy. When they could be alone together without tearing each other’s clothes off, they could be alone together in other ways. Sometimes Maggie would help clean the clinic. Sometimes Alex would work the knots out of Maggie’s tired shoulders. Sometimes they would sit and share stories of their days. There were humble dreams for the future, too. And those dreams  _ were _ humble: ways for Alex to taste some of the elaborate foods that Maggie could eat at the Armistice dining hall (“If I snuck you the ingredients, do you think you could cook it, Danvers?” “Probably not, Sawyer, but I’d try!”); what it would be like to sleep together through the night and wake up in the morning (“You with your short hair--you’d probably never want to look at me again if you saw the mess that my hair’s in every morning.” “I’d just help you untangle it.” “If you started touching my hair when I was still half groggy, Danvers, I’m pretty sure I’d just drag you back to bed to mess it up again.”) 

There was a sadness to it, a wistfulness, but it felt so good to have someone with whom to share these longings.

And the sex never ceased to be wonderful. It became, over time, less frantic, more practiced. In Alex’s 28 years of life, she hadn’t experienced such physical care since she’d been a child in the care of her parents. Kara hugged her, Kara stroked her back when she was sick and wrapped arms around her when she was cold. And J’onn would hold her sometimes, would let her lean on his strength when she worried her own would fail. But Maggie touched her just to touch her, pressed lips to her skin because a kiss was an end in itself, tasted her sweat in the heat of the summer and drew fingers through the tangles of her hair just because she could, because she liked the way it made Alex shiver and sigh.

The summer was turning to fall when Kara grabbed Alex by the wrist between patients and said, “Something’s going on.” She dismissed the next patient--an eye infection, apparently--before Alex could stop her (Alex half apologizing and promising half price to come back later that afternoon, chasing after Kara who had already started up the tower.

Halfway up the tower they stopped, and Alex didn’t need Kara’s vision or hearing to recognize Maggie, holding tightly to her rope, halfway down to the water. She wasn’t climbing, wasn’t dropping. Just gripping the rope and staying still, ten gallons of water strapped to her back. 

“They’re saying something about her belay device breaking?” Kara said.

Immediately Alex turned to climb down, but Kara stopped her with a hand to her wrist. “What are you going to do, Alex? Go jump after her?”

“Kara--”

“I’ll catch her if I need to. You know I will,” Kara said quietly.

Alex’s heart raced at the thought of Kara putting herself in that kind of danger for Maggie.

But below, the rescue operation had already begun, a second rope dropping beside Maggie’s, and a man dropping beside that, guiding the belay down the spare rope as he slowly lowered himself to her level, clipping the new belay to her and steadying the rope as she transferred her grip over, and then unclipping her from the broken belay, which immediately dropped freely along its rope until it splashed into the water.

Maggie finished her climb, hauling herself breathlessly over the railing to cheers from her teammates, and only then did Alex release the breath she never realized she’d been holding.

Maggie didn’t come to spar that evening. 

“She’s had a tough day,” James said, “But she’ll be by later on.”

Sure enough, at dinner, Maggie knocked at the door and Alex didn’t let her in. Instead Alex directed her up to the top of the tower, where she pressed kisses to the bruises and fresh rope burns on Maggie’s palms, sucked warmth into the tight, corded muscles of Maggie’s neck and shoulders, slipped all the clothing off of Maggie’s unresisting body to rediscover every aching inch of it. Maggie lay on her back on her discarded clothes as Alex’s touch grew in severity and desperation with each passing moment. When Alex realized she couldn’t look up at Maggie’s face, that the sight of Maggie’s eyes might push her beyond some ill-defined boundary into a new state she couldn’t identify or predict, she slipped back and coaxed Maggie onto her front, not quite on her belly nor on her knees but somewhere in between. Maggie let out a thin, low, primal sound as Alex’s front pressed to her back, as Alex’s hands found their way into her hair and between her thighs, taking her with an assertion and a confidence that made Maggie keen and beg and shudder.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Maggie murmured after, when she’d collapsed onto her stomach and Alex had collapsed on top of her, “but what brought that on?”

Alex rolled onto her back and looked up into the night sky. “I saw what happened today.”

“Oh, Alex--”

“Don’t leave me, Maggie.”

Maggie reached for Alex’s chin and turned it toward her. “I never want to, Alex.”

As if to prove her point, Maggie shifted her body up over Alex’s, peeling away the undergarments Alex was still wearing and covering the revealed skin with attention from her lips and tongue. Alex felt her body tighten and threw an arm over her eyes, but Maggie slipped her hand beneath it and coaxed it away.

“Look at me,” Maggie ordered gently, even as her fingers slipped inside Alex. Alex groaned in pleasure, her eyes squeezing shut.

“Look at me,” Maggie said again, and Alex did, forced her eyes open to look at Maggie’s wide, warm eyes, the concentration in her face, the steady movements of her arm and shoulder in time with the surges of feeling in Alex’s body.

The intensity of Maggie’s gaze made Alex want to look away, but Maggie’s gentle fingers against Alex’s scalp, Maggie’s firm and solid voice, called Alex’s eyes back every time they drifted. Even in her orgasm, as her eyes wanted to roll up, Maggie called her back, her fingers unrelenting inside Alex. 

“I feel this too,” Maggie gasped into the height of Alex’s pleasure. “I feel this too.”

And so it continued, into the bend of fall into another winter and into another spring, as Alex fell deeper and deeper in love.

 

\--

 

That, of course, is when everything went to hell.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex looked at Kara, then over at J'onn, and back again. "You guys are scaring me."

Alex climbed the tower, one evening, with a pouch of water and a stack of rations from Redsun on her back, to be met with the sound of Kara and J’onn speaking quietly, but intently, in J’onn’s home. Alex would have left them--they were entitled to their privacy, after all--but she could tell from the tone alone that Kara was upset.  So she knocked cursorily and then tugged the door open and poked her head in. Kara and J’onn turned to her, J’onn looking impassive but Kara frozen, eyes wide.

“Okay, what’s up with you?” Alex laughed gently.

Kara glanced at J’onn from the corner of her eye. J’onn tipped his head and shrugged at her.

“Alex,” Kara said, offering her palms as one might to quiet a sick, frightened child, “come in and sit down.”

Alex looked at her, then over at J’onn, and back again. “You guys are scaring me.”

Kara looked down and away. “Please come in.”

A knot was forming at the center of Alex’s diaphragm, pressing down into her gut and up into her lungs and making her heart pound harder and faster. She knew the problem was serious, whatever it was, when Kara didn’t comment on her rapid pulse. She set the water and rations by the door and then slipped inside, closing it behind her, and looked from Kara to J’onn expectantly.

“When you were at Redsun, I heard this group of Armistice talking. They were just, you know, sitting somewhere, hanging out over in their area, the kind of stuff I hear all the time, but I heard someone say ‘Danvers’ so I accidentally tuned in instead of tuning out like I usually do.”

Alex felt her breathing deepen, become shaky with foreboding.

“And Alex, Maggie was there. She was talking about you and us and she just… she wasn’t being nice about it.”

Alex’s nostrils flared. “What did she say.” It was an order, not a question.

“I think you should ask her--”

“What did she say, Kara?”

Kara swallowed and wilted. “She called us tower rats.” Her voice was low and defeated. “The guys she was with, they were teasing her for, you know, um, sleeping with you. And she, um, she just said that you were… attractive and… good in bed… and would the guy rather she were sleeping with his sister. Except she used words that were less polite.”

Less polite than  _ that _ . Alex could almost huff a dry laugh, except: “What did she  _ say, Kara _ ?”

Kara’s eyes were wet and shimmering. “Please don’t ask me to tell you her words, Alex. They were awful. I can’t say them to you.”

“I think you know what Kara’s getting at, Alex,” J’onn said quietly. 

Alex looked at them, at J’onn’s guarded eyes and Kara’s tearful ones, at the unlabeled water pouch off to the side of the room and the bottle of soap they’d received from James.

“Where was Olsen?” Alex asked.

Kara sagged even further. “He was there. He didn’t say anything. At least, not while I was listening.”

Alex looked down and saw her own hands shaking against her thighs, tight and vibrating with rage and grief and thick, white-hot humiliation. She clenched her fingers; she could barely even hold a fist.

Without letting herself think, Alex tugged the door open and slipped out and began to climb down.

“Alex!” J’onn called, “where are you going?”

“Armistice,” Alex called back.

She vaguely heard the sound of shuffling from the floor above her, the sound of J’onn and Kara cursing quietly, and then both of them came out and began to climb down after her.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Kara pleaded, “just give it a night.”

“Don’t be rash, Alex,” J’onn echoed.

But this rage had to go somewhere, had to be released or she’d explode.

“Come with me if you want, but stay the hell out of my way,” Alex yelled back.

The Armistice barracks building was, like so much else on the Bridge, largely built of corrugated metal. Its most distinctive feature was its weathered metal roof. The sheets of aluminum were recycled from some prior use, a faded green color with white words and word-fragments written on them in some language Alex couldn’t understand. 

She’d never been inside the Armistice barracks before, but she knew where the door was. She incapacitated the sentry before he’d managed to finish telling her not to enter. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, windows down one wall illuminated a long, narrow hallway. Doors were spaced along the opposite wall. Alex stepped forward and glanced in the first one: a dozen people milled around a room with maybe twenty beds. One or two noticed her looking in; a girl narrowed her eyes and said, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing in here?”

Maggie wasn’t there. Alex glanced down the hall: she didn’t have time to go searching room to room. In her pocket, she had a small flashlight; she used it in the clinic to check patients’ throats and ears and eyes. She walked forward, dragging the butt of it along the corrugated metal wall so that it rattled and clanged loudly. Behind her, Kara winced and covered her ears. 

“Alex, this isn’t how you go into a fight,” J’onn gritted. But Alex couldn’t hear. Not really.

“Sawyer!” she yelled. “Sawyer, come out here!” 

She’d drawn attention. All along the corridor, heads poked out of the doors, looking at her, and then back at Kara and J’onn, with incredulity.

A teenage boy stepped out, barely out of puberty, and tried to grab Alex’s arm to stop her. He landed on his back with a sprained wrist. And then a woman, barely older than Alex herself, stepped in front of her; she half-fell back into her room, gasping for breath.

“Easy, Alex, we can’t take all of them,” J’onn said quietly from behind her.

“Not unless you want me to break my secret,” Kara amended.

Alex heard a male voice, somewhere ahead of her: “Oooh, Maggie! Trouble in paradise!”

“Maggie!” Alex yelled, “come out and talk to me, you cowardly piece - of - shit!” she clanged the flashlight against the metal in time with her words as she approached the end of the corridor and prepared to turn back.

“Alex.”

There, at the last door, that familiar, beautiful, terrible face.

“Alex, what are you doing?” Maggie stepped out, hands offered open-palm in front of her. 

Alex stopped, feet planted. She put the flashlight back in her pocket and crossed her arms. “I don’t know, Maggie. I’m a tower rat, aren’t I? I barely have a brain to think with.”

(From behind Maggie, a male voice snickering.)

(From behind her: “Alex.” Kara’s soft, pleading voice.)

A step, another step, and a shove to Maggie’s shoulders and she stumbled back into her room, seven or eight other Armistice--including James--stepping back from the door to give her space. Alex followed. J’onn and Kara followed Alex.

“I heard you were saying things about me to your friends today, Maggie,” Alex growled.

More snickering from further in the room.

“I talk about you sometimes,” Maggie said, noncommittally.

“Why don’t you tell me what you said, then?”

Maggie’s voice shook, her hands still outstretched. “It… sounds like you already know?”

“I want you to say it to my face.”

Maggie gritted her teeth and looked down. A silence stretched between them, tensely blanketing the whole room.

“Say it,” Alex said again.

Maggie looked up, nostrils quivering, jaw clenched.

“Say it!” Alex growled, taking a half-step forward and shoving Maggie again with both hands to the shoulders. Maggie stumbled back and bumped into one of the bunks behind her.

“Are you seriously going to let a tower rat push you around?” a man exclaimed from further in the room. Alex glanced over and recognized him as the pack leader back at Maggie and Alex’s first fight.

“Can it, Mike,” Maggie yelled back, eyes still locked on Alex. Then: “I don’t want to do this with you, Alex.”

“Tell me what you said.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Mike said, “I was giving her shit for fucking a dirty climber--”

“ _ Mike _ \--”

“--and she said everybody’s gotta satisfy the urge to get it wet sometimes--which, okay, I can empathize--and that you were a hell of a package and good with your tongue, and if not with the tower rat then maybe with my sister, and I told her she better not come near my sister because who the fuck knows what diseases she’s picked up by going outside the Clan. But you’re hot, for a climber. I’ll give you both that.”

Alex felt a growing pressure in her soft palate, a sharp pain there, the indication of a building urge to cry. She swallowed hard and suppressed it. 

“That about cover it, then, Sawyer?” she gritted.

Maggie winced, but nodded  _ yes _ . 

“What the fuck, Maggie, you’re an embarrassment right now, taking this from her,” said Mike. Around him, an echo of agreements.

Alex flexed her knuckles and stared fixedly at Maggie. Now that she’d gotten this far, she wasn’t sure what to do next.

Maggie addressed it for her. She turned her back and walked away, stopping at the foot of a bunk that Alex assumed must be hers, judging by the drawing of the fish taped to the wall above it, identical to the tattoo on her back. Alex’s eyes flicked to the shelf above it and settled on a limp canvas bag. She thought nothing of it, but J’onn appeared to have noticed it at the same time she did. She would never know what about it had caught his eye, what had inspired him to stride forward, brushing past Alex, to pull it from the shelf, but Alex instantly knew he was onto something because Maggie cursed and shot out a hand to stop him but no, he brushed past her too, and grabbed the bag and opened it and pulled out…

A book.

Not one of J’onn’s. A new one, that Alex had never seen before. 

J’onn had fire in his eyes when he looked from the book in his hands to Maggie’s face, which had shifted, suddenly, from something mournful to something defensive and closed off. 

“Maggie, how could you,” Kara said quietly, from behind Alex.

Suddenly, so suddenly, it all made sense. Why Maggie had come back after she’d left, all that time ago. Why Maggie would have feigned friendship, and then more, with Alex, to get close to her, to continue with the reading lessons, and the fighting lessons.

She was working for Luthor.

Alex lunged, a jab going for Maggie’s throat that was easily parried. Maggie shifted quickly from surprised defense to stable offense and suddenly they were fighting, as though this were the moment they’d been rehearsing on top of the tower for all those months, and with a sinking feeling Alex realized that in all those warm nights of friendship over games and books, in the hotter nights of passion in hidden corners and in the clinic after hours, Alex had let her guard down, and J’onn had let his trust grow, and they had let Maggie become as good a fighter as Alex. And here, in Maggie’s space, surrounded by Maggie’s friends chanting her name, Alex was struggling to keep up.

(“Stop them,” Kara said, “This is awful, please just stop them, or I’ll do it.”)

(“If we step in there to pull her out, this will turn into a brawl and then we’ll really be in trouble,” J’onn said grimly.)

It was James--kind-faced James, whom Alex had forgotten was in the room--who yelled “That’s enough!” and wrapped his arms around Maggie to pull her back when she had Alex cornered between two bunks. Alex stared at Maggie, at the bruise blossoming across her cheekbone and the redness blooming on her forearms. Maggie met her eyes unwavering, inscrutable.

“I think you guys had better leave,” James said quietly.

“Indeed,” said a new voice from near the doorway. Alex glanced over.

Luthor. With her daughter a half-step behind.

“I do thank you for the work you’ve put into training one of my finest soldiers in hand-to-hand, Mr. J’onzz. We would certainly welcome you and your family to join Armistice if you are so inclined, but until you do so, you are not welcome here.” Her voice was quiet but imperious: calm and dominant. She held a hand out toward J’onn. “My book, please. My darling Maggie and I have much to discuss about it.”

Alex saw red, again, but she exhaled sharply and released it.

J’onn handed the book back and gestured for Alex. “We were just leaving,” he said.

Kara waited until they’d made it through the watching eyes of every Armistice in that building and out the door before she slipped a warm arm around Alex’s waist. Alex let her. Back at the clinic, Kara sat her down and wordlessly taped up her split lip, splinted her sprained finger (on her non-dominant left hand, thankfully), and put a cold pack on her ankle. J’onn sat with them, his presence steadying.

“You didn’t know that she was working for Luthor, did you?” Kara asked him.

J’onn barked out a humorless laugh. “No. All my years of training, and I didn’t see this coming.”

It was dark when they left the clinic again. They could see lights and hear commotion coming from Armistice. Some kind of festivity, it seemed. Alex imagined Maggie sipping moonshine, waving green flags in the air and laughing with her friends at how well she’d duped the tower rat doctor and her whole family.

The tower was dark. Nobody was watching them. So Alex didn’t fight when Kara lifted her and climbed the height of the tower with Alex on her back.

Alex declined supper. She didn’t brush her teeth. She slipped into her bed and, for the first time she could remember, since she had lost her parents, drew the curtain all the way across.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard the rattle of it sliding open again, felt the shift of the sleeping mat, and then the warmth of Kara folding herself to her back.

She didn’t cry. She couldn’t. But Kara’s forearm reached across her chest, and Alex gripped it tight, so tight it hurt, with her uninjured hand. And Kara, indestructible Kara, just reached her other arm around, folded her opposite hand over Alex’s grip, and held it there.

 

\--

 

Alex woke up, sore, to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

“It’s James,” Kara said dully from beside her. “I’d recognize that heartbeat anywhere.”

Alex grunted and burrowed deeper into her blankets.

But Kara slipped away and went to the door. 

“Can we talk?” James asked her, “maybe up the tower or something?”

“Did you know?” Kara asked.

“Kara--”

“Did you know she was using us, James?”

“It’s not that simple--”

“Are  _ you _ using us?”

“No, never, but--”

“Is she helping Luthor read her books?”

“Yes, but--”

“Have you heard her say terrible things about Alex?”

Alex heard him huff out a frustrated sigh. “You don’t understand.”

“Have you said things like that about me, James?”

Silence.

“Oh, God. You have, haven’t you?”

“No, I… Nothing has happened between us, Kara. It’s different.”

“It was going to. We both know that eventually, it would have.”

“No, it wouldn’t have, Kara.”

James’ tone was firm and final, and Kara didn’t have a retort.

“It wouldn’t have, because I tried to be with someone outside the Clan once, and it ended really, really badly for both of us. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Kara sighed. “But Maggie…” she trailed off.

“You should let Maggie explain.”

And just like that, Kara was firm again. “‘’ _Should_ ’?! We don’t owe her a thing, James.”

James couldn’t respond.

“I think you should go now,” Kara said. “This whole… thing… was fun while it lasted, I guess.”

“Kara--”

“Just go,” Alex called, without rolling over.

So James did.  


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie sighed, pulling the cloak over the Armistice patch on her shoulder and tying it snugly at her throat. “I don’t have the power that you seem to think I do. Believe me.”
> 
> Alex scoffed. “That’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, the response to the last chapter blew me away. I've barely made a dent in replying to all the comments, but I promise I will get to them! I love you all. Those little notes really do make my day.
> 
> **Content warning for this chapter:** Kara and Alex discuss abortion with a patient. It's clinical, non-judgmental, choice-oriented, and brief, at the very beginning of the chapter. If you'd rather skip it, start reading at paragraph 9 ( _'"Wanna call it quits for today?" she asked.'_ ). You should be able to pick up the narrative just fine from there.

Alex didn’t want to get up that morning. She didn’t want to eat, or bathe. She wanted to lie in bed, facing the wall, and not to move, maybe ever. She wanted Kara and J’onn to live their lives without her; she wanted to fade into nothing, to crumble into ash right there, in the bed where she lay.

But she’d learned to muscle through loneliness and fear and grief as a teenager with a younger teenage sister to care for. And so she muscled through this, on force of principle alone, and hobbled carefully down the ropes and ladders to the clinic, consciously avoiding looking toward the Armistice drop zone, even though she knew that Maggie probably wouldn’t be there, that she’d need another few days to recover from her own injuries.

Not a single Armistice came to the clinic that day. Barely anyone came: scandalous news traveled fast, it seemed. They treated two Unaligned and, as usual, charged them very little, and confirmed to a young woman from Redsun that she was, in fact, pregnant. She hadn’t been happy about it.

“He’s, um, he’s with someone else,” she said nervously. “We just… once. You know?” And then she burst into tears.

Alex was only able to blink blankly back at her.

Kara rushed in, offering the girl her hand and saying, “You can do whatever you want to do. We can help monitor your pregnancy if you want. And if you want to have an abortion, you’ve got about ten more weeks where we can help you. After that, you’d have to go to a Clan doctor with more resources than we have for the procedure, but we can help you with the aftercare.”

Alex watched Kara dumbfounded, at her kindness and openness, like it was something new, something she’d never seen before. Goodness, even from someone as genuine as her sister, felt so foreign now.

But the Redsun girl had sniffed through her tears, Kara helping her to get her breathing under control and offering her a soft, clean cloth to wipe her face. When she left, she was more calm, more collected, saying she needed a little more time to make her decision. And then Kara had turned her soft eyes on Alex.

“Wanna call it quits for today?” she asked.

Alex shook her head. “We have to trade for all our water and goods now,” she said. “We can’t afford it.”

“We’ll manage for a day,” Kara said, “Come on.”

Kara helped her climb up to the top of the tower. They lay side by side on the ground, looking up at the late-afternoon sky.

“Want to go flying again?” Kara asked.

Alex laughed dryly. “And never come back,” she said.

“I could tuck you and J’onn under my arms and we’d just head up the river for as far as we could go,” Kara said, gesturing with one hand in the air above them. “You could carry that tree book you love so much, and J’onn could carry some pots or something, and we’d just build ourselves a house on the riverbank somewhere. No Leeside, no Windside, no Bridge. Just us.”

“Just us,” Alex echoed quietly.

It sounded wonderful.

 

\--

 

Days slipped by. Alex remembered how to function with purpose, and not just by rote. Her hand and ankle and finger healed.

She trained herself not to look at the Armistice drop zone, ever, during her climb.The craving never eased, not really, but over time it became easier to control.

Their patients began to come back, a few days after the event at Armistice. After a few weeks, even a few Armistice showed up, slipping in under dark, untagged clothing for treatments they didn’t want to request from their clan doctor: everything from venereal diseases to injuries from unauthorized fights to, on one memorable occasion, poisoning from bad hooch.

Alex and J’onn went back to training every morning and evening, just the two of them, on top of the tower. It was not as lonely as Alex had thought it would be, or as she remembered it having been compared to their sessions with Maggie and James. It was by training one-on-one with him again that she could remember the unwavering, unequivocal trust they shared, and the filial intimacy that came with that. She had grown to love Maggie and James both in different ways, but sparring hand-to-hand with J’onn reminded her what it felt like to know, with absolute certainty, that if she were to put her very life essence in a fragile glass bottle, there would be nobody--maybe not even Kara--to whom she would more readily entrust it than J’onn J’onzz.

And so their life rolled along. After thirty days, Alex still couldn’t think about Maggie without feeling her pulse surge in grief and rage and longing. She still avoided taking trade trips to Armistice--J’onn usually offering to handle that to spare both Alex and Kara the indignity. She still avoided walking past Armistice, even, if she could.

Alex started to think that everything with Maggie would fade into her past: one more name on the list of people she’d loved and lost.

And so, of course, just as Alex began to feel that she might settle into this new normal, yet again, things began to change.

 

\--

 

The news came to them from a Current boy named Winn.

Winn worked at a hydropower station at the base of one of the towers. Alex and Kara were both fond of him. He was injury-prone, both from the climb down to the power station and from the bullying he tended to take from his Clan-mates. The bullying was the reason he tended to avoid his Clan doctor when he’d been bruised or scraped up from a fall or a punch: he wasn’t very empathetic, Winn said. He wasn’t always able to pay them in chits, but he’d risk his own skin by paying them in electricity, a half-day’s worth diverted to the clinic that the clinic hadn’t paid for.

“We get twice as much power as we used to out of those turbines, thanks to my upgrades,” he said, “so if they start wondering where the power’s gone, I can just threaten to reverse all my improvements.”

That day, Alex was swabbing a large gash on his forearm. He said he’d gotten shoved back at his barracks and cut it open on the end of a bunk.

“So what do you think, doc?” he’d asked, “You think we might actually be able to get off this bridge?”

Alex chuckled softly. “I think a lot of generations before us have wondered that.”

“No, but really,” he’d said, “like, if the Leesiders and the Windsiders get their stuff worked out, then we should be able to walk off, right? On whatever side we want! I just want to touch the grass. Or maybe a tree.”

There was an earnestness to his tone that perplexed Alex. “You sound like you think this might actually happen.”

“Well, I mean, that’s what they’re saying, right? The traders? That they’re in talks?”

“Someone’s telling that story once every other week, Winn,” said Kara, who was prepping steri-strips to close the wound.

“I know. But, I dunno, it seems different this time. Something about the tone.”

Neither Alex nor Kara thought much about it after he left. But the following evening, at supper, J’onn said, “Strange thing happened today. I thought you should be aware of it.”

Alex, chewing, looked up at him and waited.

“I was at Armistice dropping off a vid player I’d fixed for them, and while I was there, I got an ask for a strategy consult. Haven’t had one of those for awhile,” he said, with a dry laugh, “so I went. In the past, those have been with lead Armistice enforcers, but this time, their messenger took me right in to Luthor herself.”

Alex swallowed, and didn’t take another bite. Beside her, Kara was equally still.

“What did she want?” Alex asked.

“To recruit me, apparently,” J’onn said.

Alex, stunned, could do nothing but blink at him, and Kara did the same for three seconds, four, and then burst out laughing.

“Seriously?” Kara gasped, “What on earth was she thinking?”

“She was thinking she needs a general,” Alex said, very much not laughing. “Isn’t that right, J’onn?”

J’onn nodded once. “That’s my guess. She wasn’t joking, Kara. She promised high Clan status for all three of us, and tried to bribe me with promises of first-rate equipment for the clinic if we joined.”

“What did you tell her?” Alex asked nervously.

J’onn smiled. “What do you think I told her? I told her where she could take her offer so that I’d be sure never to see it again.”

Alex ate another bite of food, and then another, and then set her fork down. “Have you heard that the Leesiders and Windsiders are trying to make peace?”

J’onn sighed. “You’ve heard that rumor too, have you?”

Alex nodded.

Suddenly J’onn looked tired, and much older than he was. “They’ve been at war for so long, it’s hard to imagine what their identities would become if they stopped fighting,” he said, with a sigh. “But I hope they could find a way to make peace. I dream it.”

Kara had long since stopped laughing. “What would happen to us if they do?”

“‘Us,’ as in, you and me?” J’onn asked, “Or the Bridge people?”

Kara shrugged. “Both, I guess.”

“My best guess will be that the Bridge people would be free to leave the Bridge,” J’onn said. “But I’m a criminal in both countries. I don’t know what I’d do.”

“We’d work something out together,” Alex said.

Kara looked down and adjusted her glasses. “I don’t think I’d want to go to either place, even if they weren’t at war anymore.”

J’onn smiled tightly, sadly. Then, with firm resolution, he rolled his shoulders and popped his neck and lifted his bowl of food again. “Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is that I should probably spend the day with you in the clinic for the next day or two, to keep an eye out for any backlash or retaliation for my refusal.”

“Oh, you don’t need to--”

“I know you could defend yourselves just fine, Alex,” J’onn interrupted, “but if I’m there, you two can focus on your patients and I can focus on security.”

And so he did.

Alex was grateful to have him there, because she would, definitely, have been distracted without him, an ear constantly cocked for outside threats. J’onn stayed with them for five days. Starting the third day, he brought repair projects to work on slowly while he listened for trouble: portable stoves, a microscope. In one case, a drop belay device.

On the fourth day, Winn was back, this time with a burn on the back of his hand from a turbine generator shorting out.

“I’ll have to pay you in electricity,” he said. “Things are a little tighter than usual right now.”

Alex didn’t think much of it. Neither, apparently, did Kara. But after Winn left, Kara immediately turned to J’onn where he was sitting near the door.

“I could hear you setting your jaw,” she said, “what are you thinking?”

J’onn waved his hand dismissively. “Probably nothing,” he said. “I’ll look into it and let you know if it’s something to be worried about.”

But that night, J’onn came home with two food rations and five gallons and a grim look on his face.

“I went to Current for these,” he said.

“What’s the story?” Alex asked.

J’onn swallowed hard. “They were accepting chits of other colors.”

Kara gasped. Alex froze, her fork halfway to her mouth.

The single, long-accepted rule of trade on the Bridge had always been that the chits exchanged always had to come from the Clan of one of the people trading. Current and Armistice could trade in blue and green, not red or yellow, and Unaligned could only trade in the currency of the Clan of the person they were trading with. Cross-color trading blurred the lines of debt between the Clans, creating the possibility of destabilizing the Bridge’s precarious, but historically stable, political and economic balance.

“Why would they do that?” Kara asked.

“For the reason they’ve never done it before: to destabilize the order of things.”

It was two mornings later, early, when Kara spun toward Alex as she was preparing to go up to train and said, “What the hell does she think she’s doing, coming here?”

Alex didn’t have to ask who ‘she’ was.

“Come on,” Alex said, hurrying out the door. Kara hurried behind her.

“Maggie’s coming,” Kara called to J’onn as she pulled herself up the final few knots in the rope.

“Can I throw her off the tower?” Alex growled, brushing non-existent dust off her palms.

“Stand down, Alex,” J’onn ordered.

“I wouldn’t actually throw her--”

“Yes, you would,” Kara said matter-of-factly.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Okay. But I won’t.”

“She’s coming up here for a reason,” J’onn pressed, “and I suspect it’s in our service.”

Alex scoffed.

“If Armistice wanted to pick a fight with us, they’d do it at midday at the clinic, to have an audience and make a show of it. And they wouldn’t send Maggie to parlay because her history with us is too fraught. She’s coming here on her own."

Kara waved for their attention and drew a finger to her lips, pointedly turning her attention to the top of the rope. Alex took two steps forward, putting herself between Maggie and her family, and flexed her fists. The rope began to tremble, dancing on the ledge under the weight of a moving body, and then a hand shot up and grabbed the lip, and then another: Maggie’s hands, looking as they always had, calloused and strong and not, as Alex had somehow imagined, covered in blood.

Maggie vaulted over the ledge with a comfort born of having done it hundreds of times before, but this time she stayed low to the ground, crouched. She wore a long black cloak over her clothes, too heavy for the weather, but its purpose was clear: Alex couldn’t see any green markings anywhere.

“You knew I was coming,” Maggie said quietly, looking up at them, clearly having been waiting for her.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of us this time,” Alex gritted. Beside her, in her peripheral vision, Alex saw Kara adjust her glasses, using her x-ray vision to scan Maggie for hidden weapons or other dangers. She nodded once: clear.

“No, wait, how did you know to expect me?” Maggie asked, crouching lower to the ground. “Who told you?”

Alex rolled her eyes. “The thing with being a _tower rat,_ Maggie, is that you learn to be able to tell when someone is climbing your tower. Nobody told us you were coming.” She lifted her head with all the arrogance and imperiousness she could manage. “Look at you, crouching down like you’re afraid someone might see you up here. God, the worst thing about all this is that I couldn’t see through you from the beginning. You made such a big deal about hating liars.”

Maggie clenched her jaw and looked down. “I don’t suppose you’d listen if I tried to explain all that.”

Alex chuckled and shook her head. “I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that you apparently assume the worst of me, or the fact that, in this case, you’re right: I don’t give a shit about your explanations.”

“I care about your explanations.” J’onn stepped forward, past her.

Alex bristled, and Kara laid a steadying palm on her back.

“But first, you need to take that cloak off, because listening to you sure as hell isn’t the same thing as trusting you,” J’onn said.

Maggie nodded. She undid the tie at her throat and let the cloak drop to the floor behind her. Her green patch was on her shoulder: a chevron.

She was officially one of Luthor’s lieutenants now, then.

Alex swallowed bile. All they’d shared, all they’d given one another, only to find out that they’d bred the Bridge’s next warlord, better-trained and better-equipped than any before her.

“Lie down, hands behind your head,” J’onn said, and Maggie complied, stretching out on her stomach, forehead pressed into the grit. Alex patted her down, rolled her over, and patted her down again. It was a charade, of course. They knew she was clean. But it was an important power play, and Alex had learned from J’onn the importance of maintaining an air of authority in times of conflict.

(If Alex noticed that Maggie’s body felt thinner, less firm under her hands than it had felt before, she dismissed it to Maggie’s no longer training with them on the tower-top.)

“All right,” Alex said, stepping back and falling into a crouch as Maggie sat up. “What do you want?”

“To warn you,” Maggie said quietly, eyes locked on Alex’s.

Alex threw her hands up in disbelief. “And we should trust you why? Because you hate lying, right? That’s one of the first things you ever said to me--”

“Alex,” J’onn said, in warning, and Kara rested a calming hand on her knee. And then, to Maggie, J’onn said, “Pieces are moving, aren’t they.”

Maggie tore her gaze from Alex and turned to look at J’onn. She nodded. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about peace talks between the Leesiders and Windsiders. They’re true. It looks like it might actually happen, this time.”

Kara’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on Alex’s knee. Alex laid a hand overtop and squeezed.

“If they make peace, people will be able to leave the Bridge,” Maggie said, “and then everything will change, and nobody knows how. Luthor has decided that the best way to protect Armistice--which is really just about protecting herself and Lena--”

“Lena?” Kara asked.

“Her daughter,” Maggie clarified. “The best way to protect herself is to take control of as many of the bridge’s resources as we can. So we started with Current. We’ve been hoarding their currency. Luthor literally has a barrel of it in her quarters. For awhile, they just made more, but then they realized they were just putting themselves into greater debt.”

Alex waved a hand dismissively. “They seem to be working around it by trading in other Clans’ chits.”

“It doesn’t matter,” J’onn said, in realization. “They’re just making themselves vulnerable. When they’ve got nothing left of their own, Luthor will march her barrel of chits over to Lord and use the debt to lay claim to all of Current’s resources.”

Maggie nodded. “Right. And if things had gone as planned, they’d have had to surrender or go to battle with us, and we felt pretty sure they’d surrender because they know we’re more powerful than they are.”

“But things aren’t going as planned,” Kara intuited.

Maggie shook her head. “Lord is smarter than anyone gave him credit for. He saw the writing on the wall, and Current started hoarding Risen currency. By trading in other Clans’ chits, they were able to do it pretty quickly. So when Luthor goes to Lord, Lord is just going to pick up and go claim everything from Lane over at Risen.”

J’onn had his jaw set, arms crossed firmly over his chest. “And if I know Lane’s MO at Risen…”

Maggie nodded. “James has an old... connection… at Risen.” Her eyes flicked to Kara, but settled back on J’onn. “To one of Lane’s daughters, actually.”

Alex had a flash to that day, so long ago now, when she and Maggie had fought for the first time. _Yellow-belly_ , Mike had called James.

Yellow, like Risen.

Oh.

Kara’s hand squeezed tighter against Alex’s thigh -- tight enough that Alex would have a bruise, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her sister to stop.

“Lane’s plan is to fight,” Alex realized.

Maggie nodded. “Yeah.”

And so it would begin: the Bridge, a new war zone.

“But this could be stopped, right?” Kara said. “Just put the Current chits back into circulation, skip the hostile takeover part.”

Maggie bit her lip and shook her head. “Luthor is too proud for that,” she said. “But even if she weren’t, it’s too far along, now. Whether or not Luthor takes over Current won’t stop Current from trying to take over Risen with what they’ve hoarded. She’s tried to restrict all our trade to Redsun only, but that hasn’t really worked. Our major generator’s been on the fritz for ages, and Redsun doesn’t have enough power for us to buy from them, and even if they did, we’d be opening ourselves up to having Redsun start hoarding our chits.”

“So what’s her plan?” J’onn asked.

“She knows she needs an ally. Non at Redsun seems like the obvious choice, strategically, but they hate each other. So later today, I’m supposed to go with her for a meeting with Lane and his people.”

“God, you’re in deep,” Alex spat.

Maggie’s gaze shifted back to Alex, brow furrowed, and Alex could only shake her head. “I can’t believe I ever thought you had a soul, let alone--”

“Alex, please,” Maggie interjected quietly. “I didn’t have to come here, it would have been safer for me not to.”

“Why did you?” Kara asked.

“Because nobody in the Clans gives a damn about the Unaligned, Kara,” Maggie said, voice cracking. “You’ll be attacked and imprisoned by whatever side gets to you first, for your medical skills and J’onn’s military expertise. Or you’ll get killed in the crossfire, and nobody in a Clan will care.”

“And let me guess: if we just join Armistice, you can keep us safe, right?” Alex said.

Maggie wilted. “I could never ask you that,” she said. “No matter that it might be true. You wouldn’t be you if you joined a Clan.” She reached behind herself, fumbling for her cloak, and tugged it toward her. “I have to go. People will will start wondering where I went.” She looked back at J’onn, who was sitting quietly, watching her. “I just want you to be safe,” she said to him, as though he were the only one who might believe her. “I thought if you knew, maybe you could find a way to be safe.”

“You want us to be safe? Find a way to get your friend Luthor not to go to war,” Alex snarled, bracing her hands on her hips.

Maggie sighed, pulling the cloak over the Armistice patch on her shoulder and tying it snugly at her throat. “I don’t have the power that you seem to think I do. Believe me.”

Alex scoffed. “That’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”

Maggie didn’t respond to that. She stayed low and began to make her way to the rope to begin her climb back down.

“Maggie,” J’onn called, just before she could throw her leg over.

Maggie looked up.

“You’ve been reading books for Luthor.”

Maggie shrugged noncommittally.  “Trying to.”

“What do they say?”

Maggie frowned and looked away with enough dignity to, at least, seem ashamed. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Kara had to grab Alex by the arm to keep her from running over and punching Maggie’s smug, beautiful, lying face before she disappeared over the lip and down the rope.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events tipped into one another like dominoes along the cables of the Bridge.

When Kara was new to the Bridge, it took seven days before she had enough control over her powers for Alex’s parents to feel comfortable letting her out onto the Bridge, beyond their home and the clinic.

Alex’s mother knelt down beside Alex, one morning, as she as washing dishes, to tell her it was time to let Kara venture out.

But the conversation didn’t start there. It started here:

“How do you like having Kara around, Alex?”

Alex shrugged, not looking up from the pan she was scrubbing. “It’s fine. She’s nice.”

It _was_ fine, and she _was_ nice, and Alex didn’t mind having her around. But she was also sharing Alex’s space, and Alex’s parents’ attention, but somehow, none of Alex’s chores, even though they went through more water with an extra person, and dirtied more dishes.

“She might be staying with us for a long time,” Alex’s mother said.

Alex nodded.

“She might be staying with us permanently,” her mother amended.

“I figured,” Alex said, scraping at some stuck-on grease with a fingernail. “It’s okay.”

Because it was. It would have to be. And if she were honest, Alex wouldn’t want Kara to leave their family anyway--definitely not to go to another family on the Bridge, at least. Because Kara took up space and time, and Kara was a little strange, and Kara had terrifying super-powers. But Kara was also kind, and she looked at Alex like Alex had hung the moon, and a single kind word from Alex would light up her entire face, and for all that Alex sometimes resented the space Kara was taking up in her life, she still couldn’t bear the idea that Kara might go take up that same space in someone else’s life instead.

“Your father and I were thinking that it’s time for her to get out a bit,” Mother said.

“Okay,” Alex agreed, “that sounds good. I think she’s been going a little stir-crazy.”

Her mother hummed in agreement. “I thought you might take her,” she said. “Just walk over to Armistice and pick up a few gallons, and let her walk with you. What do you think?”

Alex paused, resting her soapy hands on the edges of the wash basin.

“What happens if something goes wrong? What if she does the fire-eyes thing again, by accident?”

“The special glasses your dad made for her should help with that,” Mother said gently. “But part of the reason I thought you might like to take her is because I think she trusts you most of all. You make her feel safe, Alex.”

Alex ducked her head, preening under the gentle praise.

So, that afternoon, Alex took Kara and an empty water pouch and they walked, together, to Armistice. Kara walked a half-step behind Alex, clutching nervously at her elbow, and Alex smiled at her and whispered reassurances. They picked up their water and turned back. A few kids, bullies she’d tangled with once or twice, yelled taunts at her as she walked by, calling them climbers and tower rats. Kara slunk fearfully behind Alex, but Alex stood tall: the bullies knew, by now, not to approach her with anything more than threats, because they knew she could fight better than any of them.

At the foot of their tower, Kara finally released Alex’s arm. (Alex would have deep, black bruises around her triceps later that day, but she wouldn’t complain, and would do her best to keep the arm covered when Kara could see, so she wouldn’t feel bad). They climbed together. Back in their home, Kara wrapped her arms around her knees and pressed her lips near her kneecaps while Alex set the water by the shelf.

“You’re so brave,” Kara had said.

“I’ve been listening to those guys my whole life. They don’t scare me anymore,” Alex said.

“They scared me,” Kara said. “And then I was scared that I’d hurt someone by accident.”

Alex sat down beside Kara, their hips touching, and put a hand on her back. “But you didn’t hurt anyone. And nobody hurt you.”

Kara leaned into Alex, slipping further under her arm. “I’m supposed to hurt people,” she said. “That’s why they made me like this. They told me that. But then they hurt my parents, and I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“And you won’t,” Alex said. “You’ll never have to. I promise.”

 

\--

 

Alex, Kara, and J'onn waited several minutes on top of the tower to be sure that Maggie was out of hearing distance, Kara tracking her footsteps until they touched the ground at the base of the tower.

“So what do we do?” Alex asked.

Kara looked at J’onn, and she and Alex awaited his answer together.

J’onn swallowed hard and then set his jaw. “We don’t lose our cool,” he said. “We keep things close to the chest. We begin to quietly stockpile supplies, slowly, so nobody notices. Focus on blankets and rations that don’t need to be cooked. And we keep steady, and pay attention, and try not to jump the gun.”

“Okay,” Alex said, but J’onn wasn’t finished.

“Kara,” he said.

Kara nodded.

“When was the last time you used your powers?”

“Absolutely not, J’onn,” Alex interjected. “No way. She’s not putting herself at risk to keep us safe.”

“I’m not talking about keeping us safe, Alex, I’m talking about keeping _her_ safe. She’s not a child anymore, she needs to understand what her body can do--”

“Why would she need to understand that if she’s not going to use them--”

“ _Would you both stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?!_ ”

Alex clammed up, fists clenched tightly at her sides. J’onn’s nostrils flared and he settled his hands on his hips.

“You’re right, Kara, I’m sorry,” he said.

But Alex wasn’t going to apologize for defending Kara’s safety above her own.

Kara sighed and slipped off her glasses. She turned her head to face out over the open River and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were red, hot and glowing like an ember in the stove. They stayed like that a moment, then another, and then, like hot coals dropped in cold water, they simmered back to their natural blue color.

“I test my powers sometimes,” Kara said, slipping her glasses back into place. “Some of them I use all the time: the hearing, the x-ray vision, sometimes the freeze-breath to chill up a cold pack. But sometimes I test the fire-vision up here, just like this, without actually shooting anything, just to see if I can. Sometimes I try to cut myself with knives or razors -- nothing serious, just a little nick, but the blade just slides off, every time. And sometimes I’ll fly up the tower, my hands and feet moving up the ladders and ropes but not doing any of the work, just to see if I can still do it.”

Kara turned her head and met Alex’s gaze head-on. Alex stared into those eyes that had been, just a moment ago, vacant and ablaze.

Kara’s eyes had always held so much power over Alex: the power to make her feel satisfied when they showed happiness, the power to make her feel protective when they showed fear, the power to make her feel loved when they showed love. Alex’s love for Kara, this girl from another world who had stumbled into her life as a child, was both filial and strangely maternal; Kara’s happiness, Kara’s successes, felt like reflections of her own good work, and Kara’s unhappiness was a call for Alex to try harder to help her.

But when those eyes filled with fire, Alex could no longer see what Kara felt--as though the fire in them used her very soul as fuel.

It terrified Alex to the pith of her bones.

But then Kara was Kara again, soft and gentle and smiling, adjusting her frames back into place.

“Alex,” she said, “you and J’onn, you’ve been protecting me since I set foot on the Bridge. If the need comes up, you have to let me protect you, finally, after all these years.”

Alex swallowed and closed her eyes. She nodded once, stiffly, and looked away. She couldn’t handle those eyes right now.

J’onn stepped closer to them and set a warm hand on each of their shoulders. He turned to Kara, first. “You will never be a weapon,” he said to her. Then, to Alex: “and you’re not a shield. At this point, the two of you have been my family as long as the family I lost back in Leeside, and we will keep ourselves safe by keeping each other safe, and we will keep each other safe by keeping ourselves safe. We’re better as a unit than as three people working side-by-side. Right?”

“Right,” Kara said, unhesitant.

Alex swallowed, and swallowed again. She couldn’t find her voice, stolen away somewhere by her fear and her frustration and her disquieting relief. But she covered J’onn’s hand on her shoulder with her own, and nodded just the same.

 

\--

 

But things were moving, events tipping into one another like dominoes along the cables of the Bridge.

In the morning, Alex and Kara arrived at the clinic to find an unassuming, unmarked pouch hanging from the lock. Alex instinctively shot a hand out, stopping Kara from getting any closer to it. Kara took that hand, squeezed it gently, and then let it drop. She slipped her glasses down and then squinted at the pouch overtop of the frames. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“What the…”

Kara strode over and unhooked the bag without concern. It made a noise like rattling metal as it shifted, and she beckoned Alex closer.

The pouch was full of blue Current chits.

Inside the clinic, Kara took a handful of the chits into her palm and squinted at them over the rim of her glasses.

“They look like regular old chits to me,” she said.

At the midday break time, J’onn stopped by to check on them. They showed him the chits and he immediately took a few over to the microscope in the corner.

“I’m checking them for tracking numbers, microscopic microchips, anything out of the ordinary,” he said, but after careful scrutiny of over a dozen of them, he couldn’t find anything that looked unusual.

“So they’re real,” Alex said.

J’onn nodded. “Looks that way.”

Alex palmed the back of her neck and then set her hands on her hips. “Where do you think they could come from?”

Behind her, Kara laughed dryly. “Alex. Come on.”

J’onn raised his eyebrows and shrugged, half-smiling in agreement. Because, of course, only one person close to them had access to a stockpile of Current chits.

Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why would she do this?”

“My best guess is that she wants us to spend them, to decrease the Armistice stockpile.” J’onn passed a palm over his head and scratched at the back of his neck. “She’s trying to delay the war.”

“So she’s using us,” Alex said.

“Maybe,” J’onn said, and then, under Alex’s withering glare, he insisted, “But she also doesn’t have any other inconspicuous way to trickle these back into circulation. If she walked into Current and tried to spend blue chits with a green patch--a chevron, no less--on her arm right now, people would notice.”

“And of course, nobody would wonder why a bunch of Unaligned would suddenly have all this blue to spend,” Alex scoffed.

“Alex, think about it,” Kara said. “Nobody ever thinks the Unaligned know anything about what’s going on between the Clans. All we have to do is spend them and say that someone paid us with them in the clinic.”

“Yeah, until one of Luthor’s henchmen come pounding on our door demanding to know where we got them. What then? We throw her under the bus? What if she’s one of the henchmen that comes after us?”

“If it comes down to us or her, Alex, I’m going to choose us, every time,” J’onn said, without hesitation.

Alex swallowed hard. “Okay, but I don’t want…” she faltered. As angry as Maggie made her, as profoundly as Maggie had hurt her, she couldn’t erase from her mind’s eye the twinkle of her gaze when they’d splashed in the water, that night they dropped together, the sharpness of her dimples when she grinned, the tenderness of her touch when they’d kissed.

She didn’t know if any of Maggie’s feelings had been real, but she knew that her own had been. And it was hard to imagine could have been so holistic and convincing a liar.

“I don’t want her badly hurt,” Alex insisted quietly. “I mean. If we can avoid it.”

“Alex,” J’onn said, more gently. “I don’t want anyone hurt if we can avoid it, but especially not Maggie or James.”

Alex nodded.

“Okay,” J’onn said. “Here’s what we’re going to do: we spend them, but very slowly. Never more than one per day, and vary the trade counters as much as possible between water, rations, power, and goods. If there’s anything expensive you’ve wanted, like a new piece of equipment for the clinic, trade in a handful of chits for that and say you’ve been saving them up--but we can probably only get away with that once.”

Kara nodded. “Okay.”

Alex nodded too. Her fingers tapped nervously at her hipbones. “Should we get a weapon?”

“Not unless we’re prepared to use it,” J’onn said.

“I’m not,” Kara said immediately.

“Then let’s not.” J’onn nodded once with finality.

So it was agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a transitional chapter, but a necessary one. Next chapter's a big one for Maggie lovers, though!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She ever tell you what happened to her shoulder?” James asked, with a sigh.
> 
> Alex blinked, confused. “Her shoulder?”
> 
> “She had a shoulder injury before you fought that first time. That was why she was working the desk. She ever tell you how she got it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Description of past domestic violence in this chapter.

Kara and Alex did go to the Current goods counter and use a handful of their chit stash to order a case of generic antivirals. It was easy to justify, given the frequency with which viral illnesses swept the Bridge, and the severity with which Alex had fallen ill with them more than once. The eyes of the woman at the counter flashed at the sight of the fifteen chits in Alex’s palm.

“We don’t have that in stock right now, but our traders are going out tomorrow. Give us half up-front, half on delivery.”

Alex didn’t really care, since the point was ultimately to get the chits back into circulation. But she knew it would seem suspect if she didn’t negotiate. So she did, and they settled on five chits up front, ten more upon delivery, and they got their antivirals two days later.

The day after that, just as they’d managed to inconspicuously spend most of what they’d received, Kara and Alex arrived at the clinic to find another full pouch slung over the lock.

“Jesus,” Alex said, “I don’t know how she thinks we can get rid of all this.”

But they managed. Winn conveniently showed up with a wrist sprain -- bullies, this time, not a power station accident -- and they slipped him six or seven chits for power, with a nod that he could come back for more, under the table, in six or seven days.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” Kara replied. “We’re not taking sides. We just don’t want a war.”

Winn raised his hands,  _ okay, okay _ , and pocketed his chits with a promise to come back for more.

They were maybe halfway through the second pouch when the third one appeared.

“This is becoming a problem,” Alex said. 

They didn't have a way to stealthily spend enough to keep up.

They agreed, with J’onn, to take turns sleeping in the clinic to catch Maggie when she delivered the chits and ask her to stop, or at least to slow down.  But that turned into all three of them camping down there every night, because none of them liked the idea of any of the others staying either in the clinic or up the tower alone. 

And that was how they found out, together, that it wasn’t Maggie delivering them the bags of chits.

It was James, wearing a heavy black over-cloak similar to the one Maggie had worn when she met them on the top of the tower. 

“Do you guys actually think that those cloaks make you inconspicuous?” Alex laughed drily as they closed the door behind him.

James slipped off his hood and sat down, tossing the bag of chits to the floor in front of him. “No, of course not. But they conceal who we are and what Clan we’re from, and most people don’t want to risk a fight by unmasking someone who’s clearly hiding.”

“Well, we don’t want to risk a fight by being a magical bottomless source of Current chits when Current knows that nobody has Current chits right now.”

James’ eyes widened. “You’ve been spending them?”

“Of course we’ve been spending them,” Kara said. “What else would we do with them?”

“Keep them out of circulation?” he said, like it was obvious.

“How does it help anything for Current not to have ways to earn back their own chits?” J’onn asked. 

“How does it help anyone if the chits go back into circulation just to find their way back into Luthor’s stash?” James retorted.

“You haven’t answered my question,” J’onn said.

James sighed and passed a palm over his scalp, frustrated. “Luthor knows the chits are disappearing. She’s not an idiot, she keeps track. Disappearing chits indicate dissent somewhere. If she’s got dissent high in the ranks, it’s going to be dangerous to pick fights with other Clans, because she doesn’t know who’s on her side. And if the chits aren’t going back into circulation, she’ll know that someone else is hoarding them, which means she’s got competition lurking somewhere. And nobody would ever think it was you.”

“Unless they saw you coming here,” Alex said. “The risk you’re imposing on us--”

“I know,” James admitted, “But the risk of an inter-Clan war is probably greater. And we’re taking steps to protect you. Nobody thinks twice about me visiting you. They know we were friends. And they know I have a history of… socializing… outside the Clan. And I’m not close enough to Luthor to have access to her stash.”

“But Maggie is,” Alex said, “and everyone in Armistice knows about her history with me, and knows she’s friends with you.”

But James dropped his head and shook it, jerkily, tinged with disbelief and frustration. “You think Maggie’s in that tight? Maggie gets the chits to me, yeah, but those chits come to her from much higher up. 

“Who?” Alex asked.

James blinked at her, incredulous. “You don’t know?”

“Dammit, James," Alex spat, "Maggie used us to learn to read and fight and threw us under the bus when she’d gotten what she needed for us. You think she ever trusted me with information about who she reported to?”

“Reported to--” James echoed, the words bitten off as though he couldn’t bear to say what might come next. He clenched his fist and drove it into his own thigh, twice, as if it might alleviate his desire to punch something else.

That feeling, at least, was one Alex could relate to.

“She ever tell you what happened to her shoulder?” James asked, with a sigh. 

Alex blinked, confused. “Her shoulder?”

“She had a shoulder injury before you fought that first time. That was why she was working the desk. She ever tell you how she got it?”

Alex shrugged. “She hurt it on a drop, didn’t she?”

“She told you that?”

Alex thought back carefully. She glanced over at Kara and J’onn, and both of them shrugged.

“I’m not sure,” she said finally. “I guess I might have just assumed it. I take it that’s not what happened.”

James shook his head.

Alex could only glare at him, eyes narrowed. She didn’t trust him, and she didn’t trust Maggie, so what care could she possibly have what version of events he might want to tell? And hadn’t they lost the thread of this conversation, anyway--what did Maggie’s shoulder have to do with the chits?

But J’onn cared, apparently, because:

“What happened, then?” he asked.

James’ gaze flicked over to J’onn, but returned to Alex almost immediately. “She got caught with a girl she really shouldn’t have been with,” he said. “Her father caught them. He’s a giant dude, one of Luthor’s top enforcers, you’ve probably seen him around. And he was  _ pissed _ at her. He knew that for Maggie to be involved with… this other girl… was bad news for both of them. So Maggie made a damn martyr of herself and took the full fall, said that she was the one who had convinced the other girl to sleep with her, that she’d been planning to blackmail her over it. And so like a good enforcer, her father put the honor and power of the Clan over his own blood and he threw Maggie over the side of the damn Bridge.”

“What?!” Kara yelped.

James’ eyes softened when he turned them to her. “He didn’t let her go,” he said, a hand out, placating, “I mean, she’s alive. But he dangled her by her arm and swore he’d drop her if she gave him a reason.”

Alex felt pressure behind her eyes. She tugged her sleeves over her hands. “How do you know that? Because she told you? She’s a liar, James.”

“Because I saw it,” James growled. “I turned a corner and there was this guy, dangling her over the edge like… like if his palm got sweaty and she slipped out, he wouldn't even care. Her own  _ father _ . And she, God, she wasn’t even begging, she wasn’t crying, she was just, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No sir,’ and ‘Never again, sir.’ I was terrified, I wanted to tackle the guy but I was scared he would drop her, so I just, I got as close as I could and then jumped in and grabbed her with both hands and kneed him in the side, knocked the wind out of him, so he let her go and I pulled her back over.”

James’ face was hard, his eyes fixed unblinking on Alex’s, and Alex couldn’t look away. 

“It must have hurt  _ so much,  _ when I pulled her back over by that arm,” James continued. “Her shoulder was dislocated. But she didn’t make a sound. Her dad, he fell over in the struggle and when he stood up I stood between them--the only time she’s ever let anyone protect her, as far as I can tell--because she was literally holding one arm up with the other one and couldn’t protect herself. And he just laughed, and said I should have taught her to fight back better. Like he wasn’t the one who was a damn Enforcer, and like she wasn’t his daughter he could have taught himself.” 

James’ eyes shifted, finally, to settle on the floor between them all, between his knees and the bag of blue chits in the middle of the circle of their bodies.

“That’s why she came to us for training,” J’onn said, quietly.

James nodded. “I mean, I she might have been able to fight him off based on what I’d taught her. The whole point of what she was doing was to take the punishment and keep his attention so the girl could get away. But the rank-and-file in Armistice want people to fit into tidy boxes, and she was never going to be like that. She’s a girl who likes girls. She’s a girl who does the drop. She’s a girl who does crazy things like ask the random Unaligned girl from the tower for a sparring match in exchange for water. So she was never going to be safe. Not really. And she’s always known it.”

“She could have left the Clan,” Alex said.

James leveled a tired, exasperated glare at her.

Alex looked away. His wordless retort was right, she knew. Clan deserters were usually hunted down by their former Clan’s Enforcers and, if they were lucky, left with a severe beating. Maggie, with her father a violent Enforcer, wouldn’t be allowed to survive it.

James sighed and rose to his feet, and then bent for the pouch of chits. He eyed it for a moment, contemplative. “Maggie thinks it’s selfish to let people care about her. She thinks it puts them in danger. She’s tried to push me away for years, but we’ve been friends for too long.” He looked at Alex again. “She’ll let you hate her because she loves you.” 

Alex looked down and away.

James tossed the pouch of chits in the air, once, and caught it. “We’ll find something else to do with these and stay out of your hair.” 

“Wait,” Alex said. She looked at Kara, first, who shrugged and nodded. Then she looked at J’onn, who nodded as well.

“We’ll take them,” Alex said. “We’ll hide them somewhere.”

James smiled tightly, and nodded. “Okay.” He pulled up the hood of his cloak and stepped to the door.

“James,” Alex said, before he could step out.

James paused and looked back at her, over his shoulder, waiting.

“Tell her I said--tell her I said to be safe. Okay?”

His smile was small, but genuine. “She won’t listen to me when I tell her that. Maybe she’ll listen better if I tell her it comes from you."

“From all of us,” J’onn added. Kara nodded.

James nodded once and slipped out.

 

\--

 

They found a place to hide their chits up on the top of the tower, in a hollow where the concrete had worn away, and then covered them with rubble.

Without the burden of trying to get rid of the whole stash, they found it was nice to have a security fund. They gave a few to Winn for power every few days, and indulged in an extra ration of vegetables infrequently enough to avoid rousing suspicion.

But around them, the Bridge was tense. It was normal for groups of Clan members to exchange banter when they crossed paths on the Bridge, the kind of petty antagonism that wasn’t devoid of real animosity but wasn’t fully impregnated with it either. But now, when Alex saw squads cross paths, they did so in tense silence, like the moment before the lid began to rattle on a boiling pot.

They saw Winn more than ever. Current was tense, and he was small and goofy and an easy target for stressed-out Enforcers and drop squads. But he was the only Current they saw.

“Currency is tight,” he said, “we’re trying to keep everything in-house. So, like, I’m really happy with this little arrangement we have, because the doc’s son is the one who gave me this black eye.”

“Why do you stay there?” Kara asked him one day, gently, as she wrapped his elbow with a compression bandage.

He shrugged. “They’d come after me if I left. I’m too important for power. And where would I go, anyway?”

Alex knew that Kara would want to take him in, like a small, lost animal. But they didn’t have a generator for him to maintain, or the means to build him one, and they couldn’t afford to feed him on what they made at the clinic.

(Alex imagined him, dangling by his arm, over the side of the Bridge.)

At some point, in the passing weeks, Alex had broken her moratorium at looking at the Armistice drop zone. She found she derived some relief, in all the foreboding and sense of impending catastrophe, in seeing that Maggie was still there, still climbing with superhuman grace up the line, carrying superhuman volumes of water strapped to her shoulders and hips.

(If she noticed a black eye, once, she told herself it was a shadow.)

(If she noticed a limp, once, she told herself it was the angle and the lighting and the weight of the water pouch she was carrying.)

Bags of blue chits still came, but smaller and with less frequency.

And in the end, it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because Current was panicking, even if Armistice wasn’t in a position to take them over anymore. They didn’t know where their currency was.

So Current took their hoarded yellow chits and marched on Risen.

The first step of their world ending, as it happened, came not with a bang but a whimper. They might not have heard about it until a day later if Winn hadn’t run into their clinic and asked, desperately, if he could hide there until the worst was over, because he was terrified of what might happen.

Lord and his inner Current circle descended on Lane and Risen and demanded all of his backlog of currency and all of his Clan’s resources in exchange for their debt. Lord was a businessman, he said, and so he didn’t want violence: Risen could merge into Current, adopt its colors and Lane could become its second-in-command, and together they could take over the Bridge.

Lane, so the story went, laughed at him.

Lane climbed up on top of his building and called to his Clan, telling them that those who wanted to join Current were free to do so, with the caveat that they would sacrifice all allegiance to Risen and therefore any benefits that would come when Risen overtook Current in the impending battle. 

Luthor, who had been in talks with Lane already, pledged Armistice’s support for Risen, and presented her own cache of Current chits--still very large, despite Maggie’s skimming--to offset a large portion of Risen’s debt.

A large portion, but not all of it. 

“We want the rest,” Lord announced, “in chits or in resources. Produce what you can.”

The leaders of all three Clans declared conditions of war, and ordered all of their people to take stations within their barracks when not performing essential duties, and all performing essential duties would have armed guards over them.

And then the Bridge descended into tight, tense silence. In that silence, Winn slipped out of the clinic and went home.

A few days passed in standoff, each Clan waiting on the others to make a move--even Redsun, who waited to see what transpired before they decided how to move forward.

Winn’s duties were, of course, essential. Kara told Alex that she’d seen him making his way from the Current barracks to the ladder down to his generator, and she’d tried to convince him to defect, to come to safety with them. He’d insisted he couldn’t do it, that his Clan would tear them apart to find him, and he couldn’t put them in that danger.

They knew this tense standoff couldn’t last. The Clans had to trade with one another to survive. None of them could provide for themselves. 

And Alex, J’onn, and Kara had to trade with the Clans to survive. And their business, such as it was, screeched to an absolute halt.

“What about the Current chits?” Kara asked.

J’onn shook his head. “Showing up now with blue chits will be a guaranteed way to draw suspicion.”

They traded what they could with other Unaligned. J’onn befriended the Unaligned woman from the next tower, M’gann, who had a good hydroponic setup, up so high under the sun. She was alone, her parents having died years earlier and having no children or partner of her own, but it was a difficult partnership because she had little need for their medical services.

“How about this,” she said to them, “I’ll give you food as best I can in exchange for your protection when this all goes to hell.”

They’d been only too happy to agree.

But she couldn’t sustain all of them, not really.

Add to that the rumblings -- coming to them through Winn, now, mostly, who would sneak by to say hello and would keep their power on for free -- of peace talks on Windside and Leeside progressing nicely.

“I’m hoping it happens soon,” he said. “I think I’d take my chances on the land instead of seeing where things go in this mess.”

Alex noticed that Maggie’s drop squad looked dirty. 

“We’re not routing power to Armistice,” Winn said. “No hot water for bathing or washing clothes, and cold water just doesn’t cut it, generally.” 

But Winn looked hungry. Current couldn’t sustain itself in food.

Alex shared parts of her own too-small ration with him when she could.

(She looked at the tall grasses growing along the banks of the River. They had a brown, cylindrical shape near the top, and a tuft of yellow atop that; according to her plant book, almost the whole thing was edible.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the drag in update pace. The past month has been unexpectedly arduous, but it's quieting down now so I should be able to post a bit more often. Hoping to get the next chapter up early next week... in which Alex and Maggie reconnect. :)
> 
> Apologies for the delay in relying to comments, too... I do respond to all of them eventually!


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened next would be the stuff of legends, of stories told for generations to come, on the Bridge and beyond it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waaaaaay back in the chapter 1 notes, I warned that there would be some blood and violence in this fic. We have finally gotten to that chapter. It's not crazy intense, but it's not nothing. If you could handle the credit card scene in 2x19, I don't think you'll have any trouble with the violence and injuries described here.
> 
> This is also a very central chapter for plot, so if you're invested in this story (I'm still giddy that there are people invested in this story!!!) this will be a tough one to skip, I'm afraid.

The first battle happened between Current and Risen.

They clashed in the alleys between Current’s houses, instigated there by Risen but giving Current the home-court advantage. Even from their home in the tower far above Armistice, Alex, Kara, and J’onn could hear the sounds of human screams, the splashes of bodies being thrown over the edge, the crunching, crushing sounds of bodies against metal and metal against metal.

“Stay here. I have to go get M’gann,” J’onn said, and then he slipped out.

Kara hunched forward, palms over her ears, leaning into her knees.

“I could stop this,” she gritted. “I could go down there and stop this.”

“Or you could make it worse by trying,” Alex said, pressing what she hoped to be a comforting hand to her sister’s back. “People do terrible things when they’re scared. And you’ll scare them.”

Kara nodded, but her face betrayed her lack of conviction.

When J’onn returned, he didn’t only have M’gann (who carried a staff and three cases of food--everything from all of her plants, she said) with him.

Between them, between J’onn’s stern face and M’gann’s determined one, slunk a nervous Winn.

“He was hiding near the clinic,” J’onn said.

“I’m supposed to fight for Current,” he said, dejectedly. “But why the hell should I put my neck on the line for people who have never been good to me?”

“You shouldn’t,” Alex said.

Kara nodded her agreement. “You did the right thing, coming to us.”

“You did, Mr. Schott,” J’onn agreed.

That night, they huddled together around the stove in Kara and Alex’s home, playing card games and trying to tune out the sound of carnage below.

Later, J’onn and Alex agreed upon an alternating watch by the door while the rest of the group slept, their bodies taking up all of the floor space in the small room.

“I want to take a shift, too,” Kara said.

Alex narrowed her eyes. “No.”

Deep in the night, the sound of violence did eventually fade.

But the people in that tower would never find out who won, or what its outcome was.

None of them would sleep, even with the rotating watches.

And in the morning, at the earliest light, Kara would bolt upright. Alex, half-dozing beside her, would leap up in response, and J’onn, on watch by the door, would turn his gaze to both of them.

“We have to go down there,” Kara said, near panic. “Now.”

 

\--

 

Halfway down the tower, Alex could hear muffled noises coming from somewhere in Armistice--probably the barracks. Suddenly, the clang of a door clattering open, and the muffled noises became louder, a din of yelling, chanting voices that Alex couldn’t quite parse.

“No,” Kara breathed, “No, no, no,” and without waiting for permission, threw herself off of the ladder she’d been climbing down.

“Kara!” Alex and Winn yelled in unison, watching her drop thirty feet to the ground, but she landed in a perfect tripod, hand-knee-foot, in front of the door to the clinic, and immediately began to walk toward the source of the noise.

“What the…” Winn said, eyes wide.

“Shit,” Alex cursed.

“Let’s move, people!” J’onn shouted from above them.

Alex threw all caution to the wind as she all but flew down the climb herself, recklessly dropping hand-under-hand down the ropes and skidding on her insteps down the sides of the ladders. She skipped the last ladder altogether, jumping ten feet down and tumbling into a roll on the landing, and then up into a sprint as fast as she could manage, tearing off in the direction of Kara and the noise. Heavier steps thudded behind her and she knew that J’onn was right on her heels.

When they found the crowd--dozens of Armistice, maybe hundreds, in a crowded circle in a parlay square near their barracks--their din had resolved into a chant.

“Tower rat! Tower rat!” the group yelled, fists punching the air in rhythm. Alex skidded to a stop behind them, panting, J’onn behind her, and M’gann immediately behind him, staff slung over her shoulder. Winn, to Alex’s surprise, came after that, winded but still doing his best.

The first time Alex had ever seen Kara in her life, she’d had to weasel her way to the front of a crowd of people intrigued and terrified of her. The similarities and contrasts to this moment were striking. She began to elbow her way through the throng, but almost immediately, a brown-haired woman yelled “Hey, there’s more of ‘em! Make way for the climbers!” And the crowd hollered and parted, hissing and cat-calling at Alex and J’onn and M’gann and Winn as they walked by. As the crowd parted, they revealed Kara like a curtain opening, standing at the center of the circle, the center of everyone’s attention only momentarily diverted by the arrival of Alex’s little team. Kara stood in profile, looking stoically at something to Alex’s right.

It wasn’t until Alex made her way to the center of the circle that she saw what Kara saw:

James, standing with his hands tied behind his back, his skin marred with bruises and scrapes, surrounded by three men even bigger than he was, his face a fraught combination of terror, anguish, and rage.

And in front of him:

A beaten, swollen, bloodied body, slouched on its knees with its arms bound behind its back, face obscured by long, dangling black hair, matted with blood in patchers.

But even beaten, even with her face obscured, even after all this time, Alex would recognize--

“Maggie,” she breathed, diving forward to her before she could think better of it, only to have one of the goons kick Maggie out of her reach with a heavy boot to the ribcage, colliding with a soft, sickening sound. Instinctively, Alex lashed out to grab the offending boot, knowing exactly how to twist it, exactly how to push to send the man careening onto his back in excruciating pain--

“Alex,” J’onn hissed in warning. It was enough to bring her back to herself. She pulled her hand back. But Maggie was still lying where she’d landed on her shoulder, her only movement her shuddering breath. Alex shuffled over to her on her knees, scared of what she’d see when she pushed back the bloodied hair. Carefully, she cradled Maggie’s face in one hand and cleared away the mess with the other. Her jaw was brutally swollen, the darkness of the bruise indicating, in all likelihood, a fractured jaw. There was dried blood around her mouth--her lips split--and under her nose, and the white of one swollen eye was flooded with red.

But Maggie’s eyes focused immediately, and as clearly as they could, on Alex’s, and when Alex smiled down at her, she smiled back, only the slightest curve of the lips but it was not vague, it was clear and intentional.

And then Maggie licked her lips and said, her voice quiet and cracked, “Alex.”

Alex could only nod. She bent lower, closer to Maggie, and said, “It’s okay. We’ve got you now. I’ve got you now.”

But of course it was not so simple.

“How sweet. I’m touched.”

Alex looked up.

Luthor, of course. Alex had been so fixated on James and Maggie that she’d let her gaze slip over the woman who’d overseen the beating. Who’d overseen the demise of the precarious balance of the Bridge. Luthor, with her daughter, as always, a half-step behind her.

“You’re a monster,” Alex growled.

“She’s a thief and a traitor,” Luthor retorted. “And in these… let’s call them _trying times_ , shall we? It’s important that a clear message be sent when certain… lines are crossed.”

“You’ve made your point.” James, his voice low, insistent, but also defeated. “What could it possibly do to you to let them take her in that shape? You think their little clinic can heal her of those injuries?”

“I think you would do well, Mr. Olsen, to be quiet and thank your stars that we’ve given you a chance at redemption.”

“Forcing me to choose between throwing her over the side and being thrown over myself is hardly--”

“That’s _enough_ , Olsen!” Luthor barked, and one of her thugs took a boot to the back of his thigh so that he collapsed, with a grunt, onto one knee.

“This is absurd,” J’onn’s voice boomed.

Alex had propped Maggie up against her knee, and Maggie leaned heavily into it, and into the crook of her arm, sagging. Alex looked away from her, back over her shoulder to where J’onn stood in the center of the gathered Armistice, strong arms folded over his chest. The strength of his presence gave Alex some relief, to know that there was someone on their side who could face down Luthor as an equal, without flinching. And off of his shoulder was Kara, looking fierce and defiant in a way that Alex had never seen, standing square, hands in loose fists at her sides.

And even more surprising: on J’onn’s other side, M’gann leaned casually against her staff, the thing looking like an extension of her body with all the comfort she had with it.

“You had your shot at power with me, J’onzz,” Luthor sneered. “You turned it down.”

“What do you want from them?”

“Olsen’s only crime is that he attempted to protect her,” Luthor sneered toward Maggie, “when we caught her trying to leave Armistice with my possessions. I understand that the desire to protect one’s friends does not always translate into a desire to defy one’s clan, so he’s been given a choice to prove his allegiance: he will throw Maggie off the Bridge, or he will be thrown off himself. Sawyer, however, will be going over the side either way.”

Luthor took two regal steps toward Maggie and knelt down beside her, her fingers tucking Maggie’s hair behind her ears in a sick parody of a maternal caress.

Alex wanted to snap every one of Luthor's fingers.

“One more chance, for our new audience,” Luthor crooned, “Where is my book?”

Maggie blinked blearily at her and wheezed, “I don’t know where it is. I don’t have it.”

Luthor sighed. She seemed genuinely disappointed, Alex thought, as she tightened her grip on Maggie. As though any penalty or upcoming violence wouldn’t come directly from Luthor herself.

“I thought you’d be going to Redsun, or maybe to Risen,” Luthor tutted softly, as though chastising her for spilling a gallon. Cold chills crawled the length of Alex’s spine. “I didn’t think you’d be so foolish, so _empty_ , as to forego all Clan kinship altogether. To squander yourself on a life spent climbing towers, until one of my enforcers caught you and threw you over. And now, look at you. Say your goodbyes, Maggie dear, because you’re going over the side anyway.”

The thing that broke Alex’s heart was the way Maggie just blinked back at Luthor, without defiance, without passion, but only with resignation.

Alex looked up at J’onn, and at Kara.

When Kara locked eyes with her, Alex shook her head minutely, almost imperceptibly: _don’t do anything you’ll regret._ Kara flinched, but she took two steps back, away from the center of attention.

When Alex locked eyes with J’onn, asking as best she could without words, he nodded.

Alex looked down at Maggie, again, cradled in her arm and against her raised knee, and bent down and kissed her forehead. “I forgive you, Maggie,” she murmured. She wasn’t sure, in her heart, if she meant it, but she knew that Maggie had suffered enough. And that if they were all about to die, Maggie deserved to feel forgiven, regardless of whether it was true.

This, finally, was what made Maggie’s swollen eyes turn wet, made her lips turn up in a sad, relieved smile.

Alex carefully, so gently, lay Maggie down on the ground.

And then she stood, and turned. Luthor had stood with her, tipping her head back just enough to look at Alex down the length of her nose.

Alex grabbed her.

This was not a battle they could win.

This was a suicide mission, a fiery last stand of a small pack of renegades with nothing to lose at the center of a war they wanted no part of.

Alex had never imagined herself starting a fight with a woman old enough to be her mother, but she grabbed Lillian Luthor behind the head and bent her over to bring a knee to her solar plexus and then a fist to her jaw.

A roar of rage rose from the gathered crowd and the center of the circle immediately collapsed, people with green armbands and patches and bandannas descending on Alex and J’onn and M’gann. Alex did her best to stand over Maggie, to protect her, and she managed it, for awhile. Maggie found the strength to tuck her knees up to her chest, protecting her abdomen from flying feet and fists, but that was all she could do.

In the corner of her eye, Alex saw M’gann--this woman who had come to their clinic once or twice, but who otherwise didn’t know them--moving magically with her staff, fighting valiantly with her back to J’onn, sending Armistice ducking and flying.

And then suddenly James was there, too, fighting alongside them, the ropes used to tie his wrists dangling like heavy bracelets--

(On the edge of the fray stood Winn, without a fighting bone in his body, but who always carried a multi-tool for his job: a multi-tool with a sharp knife, one that could easily, with a little elbow grease, cut through the kind of rope used to bind James.)

Alex had never been in a fight like this, but she’d trained for it with J’onn her whole life. It was hard, and she took her share of hits, but there was also a flow to it, she discovered, a sense in which each of her movements set up the next, her defenses and attacks setting themselves up rather than simply emerging in response to her attackers.

It was in that flow of the fight that Alex didn’t notice herself moving a step, then another, away from Maggie.

It was in that flow of the fight that she didn’t notice Kara, standing at the center of the commotion with her arms wrapped around her chest, as still as the eye of a perfect storm, unflinching and unmoving as the occasional wayward fist skipped off her shoulder or jaw.

Watching Alex.

Watching J’onn.

Watching.

Kara didn’t see, in the commotion, when one of the Armistice enforcers scooped up an unprotected Maggie and began to make his way to the side of the Bridge.

She didn’t see it. Might not have seen it at all if she hadn’t, through the clatter and the noise, heard a slight voice, barely a breath of a whisper, saying, into the air, as though offering a confession or requesting some final absolution:

“I’m sorry, Alex, it wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

Kara wheeled around just in time to see the enforcer drop Maggie over the Bridge railing.

What happened next would be the stuff of legends, of stories told for generations to come, on the Bridge and beyond it. It was an angel, some would insist. A demon, said others. But an energy, a whirlwind, tore through the brawl at a speed faster than light itself, faster than a bullet from a gun, bowling over enormous men, sending them sprawling and flying; it blew through to the railing and over it, unstoppable as a force of nature or something even greater.

And then, they would say. And then. As they stood there, or lay where they’d fallen, and looked at one another, trying to figure out what had happened.

And then, the girl appeared, floating up from below as though the air itself were carrying her.

The Unaligned girl, pretty, blonde, but mousy and quiet.

The girl rose back up.

She just… flew back up, up over the railing, and landed on the Bridge on her feet, as though she'd just stepped off a ladder.

And in her arms, she carried the girl they'd thrown over, who was shaking and twitching but breathing, no more harmed than she’d been before she was dropped.

The mousy Unaligned girl had _caught_ her.

The people nearest Kara’s spot on the Bridge saw the whole thing, stumbling back in awe from their fights. But further away, J’onn and M’gann were still holding off three and four attackers each, and they were struggling, their energy flagging.

Kara stood squarely, Maggie cradled carefully to her chest. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were flooded with red fire. She shot beams of it at the feet of the Armistice still attacking J’onn and M’gann, and they jumped up and back, their attention successfully captured, staring and frozen with awe and fear.

Alex stared at her sister, the gentlest, sweetest, kindest person she could ever imagine knowing, and felt an unexpected pang of fear herself, on the very edge of a broad wash of wonder. The fear was not of Kara, but of the display of raw, unimaginable power that even she had never truly seen, like this, at its peak.

But that power had always been there, contained in Kara’s unassuming form.

And then there was silence on the Bridge, two hundred eyes on Kara.

“We’ll be leaving now,” Kara said. It was unsettling, Alex thought, to hear her still sound like… well, like Kara, and yet not like Kara at all: more confident, more assertive, more poised.

Luthor, from where she was crouched to the side, could only nod dumbly. Her daughter, standing beside and behind her, stared at Kara, wide-eyed in awe.

And so Kara, still cradling Maggie, turned and began to walk back toward the clinic.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m dead and I can fly now,” she rasped, with an air of dreamy pronouncement. “I can fly and I can be with you again. Kiss me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got so many truly kind and thoughtful comments on the last chapter and I'm going to respond to all of them, but instead of doing that today I decided to put the time into editing and get another chapter out for you all. It's been a weird day in Roadie-land, and posting a new chapter always gives me a clean sense of accomplishment, so. Here ya go. :)
> 
> Hat-tip to the one or two of you who may have predicted the turn in this chapter in earlier comments.
> 
> Also: we're dealing with Maggie's injuries here, getting the full breakdown from Kara's x-ray vision and talking about treatment options. If you need a more detailed content warning than that, drop me a note in the comments before reading and I'll do my best to give you a way to read around the medical stuff. Disclaimer: I did some wikipedia-ing and webmd-ing but I'm not a doctor and apologize if any of you are and see the egregious medical errors that are undoubtedly here.

At the clinic, Alex grabbed a clean sheet for the mat by the far wall and Kara lay Maggie carefully down on it. J’onn pulled the handle off the mop in the corner and went to sand guard by the clinic door; M’gann stood opposite him, leaning on her staff. Winn pried the cover off the meter where the clinic was connected to the power grid and began to fiddle with it, overriding their power limits.

Alex and Kara knelt beside Maggie, and James hovered over them both, rubbing his hands nervously.

“We were trying to leave,” he said through rising tears. “I said we should just go, we should get to you and figure it out from there, but she was so fixated on getting that damn book--”

“This isn’t the time, James,” Alex interrupted. “We want the story, but not right now.”

James coughed and nodded and dropped to the ground near an adjacent wall, breathing deeply, trying to pull himself together

Alex leaned over Maggie, checking her pupils with the pen-light in her pocket. Maggie was flitting in and out of lucidity, but her pupils responded, and when the light was removed she blinked, adjusting. Her eyes settled on Alex’s.

“I’m dead and I can fly now,” she rasped, with an air of dreamy pronouncement. “I can fly and I can be with you again. Kiss me?”

“No flying for you,” Alex said, with a wet laugh, as she pocketed the light again, “and no dying either.”

Kara, who had sat back for a moment, leaned forward again into Alex’s space. “Alex, I have to--”

Alex nodded and sat back out of the way. 

Kara’s glasses, she noticed suddenly, were gone, lost somewhere in the fracas. Kara squinted at Maggie, starting at her head and looking slowly down her body.

“Concussion, definitely,” she murmured, “and a fractured jaw and cheekbone. Five bruised ribs, one cracked, but nothing all the way broken. Two vertebrae pressing on her spinal cord. That shoulder’s out again. Broken middle and ring finger on her right hand. Left hand is… maybe beyond repair, it looks like someone stomped on it. Bruised liver. Bruised spleen. Bruised colon. Nothing that a little time won’t fix, though. Lungs and heart look ok. Appendix is… already removed, looks like. Bladder and uterus are OK. Looks like she had a small ovarian cyst that got ruptured, so she’s probably in pain but it doesn’t look dangerous. Fractured tibia on the left leg, and”--Kara inhaled sharply-- “Broken femur and fibula, and two breaks in the tibia, on the right leg, and fractures in her foot on that leg, and I think I’m seeing a loose bone fragment in her shin.” Kara gently laid a finger a few inches below Maggie’s knee and Maggie screamed in pain. Kara pulled back immediately. James dove forward toward her, kneeling near her head and pressing his broad hand soothingly to her forehead.

Kara sighed. “Yeah, that’s a bone fragment.”

Alex took several deep breaths, hands clenching and releasing against her folded knees.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. We get her clothes off, we get a saline line in. Kara, you help me with the clothes. James--”

His eyes shot up from where he’d been looking down at Maggie.

“James, trade places with J’onn and take watch, because J’onn knows his way around the clinic. J’onn, I need you to to take stock of anything we have in the cabinet for pain or anaesthesia.”

J’onn tossed his make-shift staff to James, who obediently took a post opposite M’gann by the door. J’onn went to the cabinet. Alex and Kara, armed with heavy shears and a clean sheet, cut away Maggie’s clothes--pausing partway through as Maggie lurched in nausea, Kara just barely managing to position a basin in time--and then they covered her up again. Alex had long since learned not to cringe when gently peeling away cloth stuck by fresh blood to a wound, but she was relieved when Maggie did cringe, when she groaned a little in discomfort, because it meant she was responsive, still.

Once Maggie was undressed, Alex emptied the basin into the incineration unit on the stove, and then she and Kara went to the tub in the corner and scrubbed their hands and arms up to the elbow, heads tipped close.

“I’m most worried about the bone chip,” Alex murmured, “We don’t have the resources to operate. But a floating bone chip in her leg is dangerous.”

Kara swallowed, and said, “It’s only slipped out a little. I could, maybe…”

Alex watched her, waiting.

“If we could control the pain, I could probably just… massage it back into place. I can see it. And then we can splint it and cast it really, really well, right?”

Alex blinked, and blinked again.

“I mean, I know it’s not ideal, and I’ve never done it before, but desperate times, right? And--”

“Kara.”

Kara stopped rambling

“If we hadn’t just scrubbed, I would hug you so hard right now,” Alex said.

Kara grinned like she’d just been handed the greatest gift of her life.

When they knelt by Maggie again, J’onn joined them, holding a small tray littered with a few bottles. 

“Not much here,” he said. “Acetamenophin, ibuprofen, a few doses of some stronger narcotic stuff. One dose of surgical anaesthetic.”

Alex sighed. “We can’t use that when she has a concussion. No local anaesthetics?”

J’onn shrugged apologetically, and Alex cursed. She looked at Maggie’s mangled leg. Resetting it would be excruciating. And with Maggie’s fractured jaw, they couldn’t even give her something to bite.

It wasn’t only a matter of her comfort. Maggie would survive the pain. But her reflexes would kick in, would try to pull her leg away from whatever was hurting it, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them, and that would risk making this terrible situation much worse.

She groaned in frustration. Maggie’s eyes slipped closed and Alex immediately leaned over her, tapping her gently on her less-injured cheek. 

“Maggie, sweetie, you need to stay awake, okay?”

Maggie’s eyes fluttered open. “‘M trying, Danvers,” she said, and then twisted her face into something that still, despite everything, managed to convey a smile. “K.O. ends the fight, right?”

Alex felt a sob bubbling up in her chest. She gently pushed Maggie’s hair back. “You’re hardcore,” she said, echoing James’ words from that day, something like two years ago, now. “K.O. ends the fight. And we have a lot more to fight about, you and me, so you’re not allowed to quit early.”

Alex took a deep breath and thought as hard as she could about solutions, ran through the inventory of everything in their home, in J’onn’s home, in the clinic. She glanced at Kara, who was kneeling by Maggie’s leg, and saw her with a deep crease between her brows, eyes unfocused, and knew that Kara was brainstorming, too.

When the door creaked open, Alex jolted, prepared to jump up and tackle somebody. 

Instead, she heard James say to someone outside, “go ahead in. I’m so glad you came, and they’ll be happy for the help.” 

_ The hell _ ? Alex thought. Who on earth could be showing up to help them?

The door opened further, and a figure stepped inside, wearing the same kind of cloak that Maggie and James had worn when they’d snuck over to talk to Alex, Kara, and J’onn after their falling out.

The door closed, and the figure pulled its hood back.

Alex’s throat loosed an animal growl, but before she could make it to her feet J’onn was there, pinning Lena Luthor front-first to the wall.

(“Lena,” Maggie murmured. “You followed me.”)

“It’s funny that you think I’d be frightened by you, J’onzz, when I know you have  _ her _ here.” Her eyes flitted to Kara.

J’onn scoffed. “All right. Kara, check her.”

“You guys,” James said, “you have the wrong idea.”

“Forgive us for not taking your word for it,” J’onn said drily.

(“Lena, you came,” Maggie murmured, but nobody heard.)

Lena tugged at the closure of her cape without being asked; it fluttered to the ground at her feet. Concealed beneath it, she carried a bag slung over her shoulder.

The fabric of her vest had a darker patch over the breast. Alex realized suddenly that it was the shadow of an Armistice patch, recently torn away to reveal less-faded fabric beneath.

Lena wasn’t wearing a scrap of green anywhere.

(“Alex,” James said, “Didn’t you get it? When I told you where Maggie was getting the chits?” But nobody was paying attention to James.)

(“Lena,” Maggie said again, just a little louder.)

Lena shucked off her shoulder bag and held it out to J’onn, who took it with narrowed eyes. 

“There’s a loaded gun in there, so be careful when you search it. You aren’t the people it’s intended to shoot.”

Kara squinted down the length of Lena’s body. “She’s clean.”

“And this?” J’onn asked, holding the bag out.

Kara squinted at that, too, and then dove for the bag, snatching it from J’onn’s hand. “Oh my--there’s no way--”

She fell to her knees and opened the bag. The first thing she pulled out was a small revolver, which she held out to J’onn, who took it and emptied out the bullets and pocketed them separately from the gun. 

“Alex, bring that tray over here,” Kara breathed, and Alex did, falling to her knees and setting the tray beside the bag. Kara dropped a package of sterile latex gloves, and then container after container of medication: antibiotics, antivirals, pain pills, supplements for accelerated healing, anti-inflammatories, and then--

Two epidural anaesthesia kits. And two doses of local anaesthetic.  And a packet of powder to mix an IV nutrient solution.

Alex blinked at them, and then blinked up at Lena where she stood. “You think we’re stupid? What’s this stuff laced with?”

“Nothing. It’s all real and pure from my office at Armistice. I saw what they did to her. I knew what she’d need.”

“What she’d have needed would have been for you to stop this from happening.”

Lena had the decency to wince. “It’s not that simple,” she said.

Alex rose to her feet, fists clenched, and stepped closer. “Then explain it.”

“Lena,” Maggie croaked, and while Kara had heard it every time, this time, she finally  _ noticed _ .

“Alex,” Kara interrupted, “listen to Maggie.”

Alex looked. Maggie was squinting, flinching against the pain of her body and the lights of the clinic, but she was reaching her less-injured hand out to the woman in front of her. “She’s okay, Alex,” Maggie murmured, and then suddenly she half sat up, her body heaving. Alex and Kara dove for her. Kara snatched the basin just in time as Alex held Maggie up, supporting her as she vomited again, and then carefully, so carefully, laying her back down.

Lena was wincing, her hands pressed to the sides of her head as Maggie threw up, appearing to know better than to move toward her when J’onn still watched her with mistrust. When Maggie was settled back down onto her back, Lena ran a palm over her head, catching the flyaway hairs from her ponytail. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I wouldn’t hurt Maggie.”

Alex and Kara looked at J’onn. J’onn looked expectantly at James.

“I’ve been saying: she’s okay,” James insisted. “She’s been on our side since the beginning. Didn’t I  _ tell _ you that? Didn’t you  _ get  _ it? She was the one skimming Luthor’s chit stash for us!”

J’onn set his jaw distrustfully, but tipped his head in acquiescence.

Lena, her mouth dropping open in relief, stepped forward and kneeled carefully by Maggie’s head, beside Alex. Gently, so gently, she cradled the uninjured side of Maggie’s jaw. Maggie’s eyes fixed on her face and, even in her state, spoke a warmth and comfort that Alex had only ever seen her direct at James and at Alex herself.

Alex felt an untimely, and somewhat inappropriate, surge of jealousy at the intimacy.

“Maggie,” Lena breathed wetly, “oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop this. We’re going to--we’re going to get you fixed up, all right? Good as new, and--”

“Did you bring the book?” Maggie croaked quietly.

Lena laughed and gently pushed Maggie’s hair out of her eyes. “It’s safe,” she said. “I was afraid your friends might destroy my bag without opening it, so I’ll get it when I know they’ll hear me out.”

When Lena looked up at Alex again, her eyes were wet. “Let me help her,” she said, her voice cracking, “or help you help her. With an epidural, we can set her legs and realign her spine. A dose of local anaesthetic in each arm and we can set her broken fingers. I’ll tell you everything, I promise, once we’ve taken care of her.”

Alex swallowed, and looked down at Maggie. “Do you trust her?”

Maggie’s eyes had slipped closed. Lena leaned over her and tapped her cheek lightly, then harder, until Maggie blinked awake. “You need to stay with us, sweetheart,” Lena said gently.

Maggie was not lucid enough to comment on whether she wanted Lena to help.

But Alex had seen Maggie’s face when Maggie had looked at Lena. And realistically, Maggie would never heal without the help of Lena’s medicines.

Alex looked at Lena and nodded.

James knelt with Maggie while Alex, Lena, and Kara all tied their hair back and scrubbed in again. J’onn washed his hands too, on standby if they needed help. M’gann kept her watch by the door, and James joined her again when Maggie was safe in the care of the others. 

Alex and Kara carefully coaxed Maggie onto her side, over her groans and grunts of pain, as Lena prepared the epidural, swabbing her spine and finding the right groove between the vertebrae. She moved swiftly, confidently, and carefully, with the ease borne of years of experience. A few minute later, when the anaesthesia began to kick in, the muscles of Maggie’s legs went limp as expected, but so did the muscles of her shoulders as the pain eased.

“You hanging in there, Maggie?” Alex asked.

“M’ head hurts,” Maggie mumbled.

Alex knew that, of course she knew that. But the fact that she was focusing on that, and not her shattered legs, was a good sign.

J’onn had laid out several splint kits beside them. Alex looked at Kara, who breathed deeply, centering herself.

“You got this, Kara,” Alex said quietly, firmly.

Kara nodded, then rolled her shoulders and gently laid her hands on the bulge in Maggie’s shin.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If looks could kill, I'd have died a half-dozen times tonight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder/disclaimer that Kara's romantic subplot in this story is, and was always going to be, with James, not because I don't also love Supercorp, but because Karolsen is what emerged naturally here.
> 
> As always, thank you thank you for your love for this fic. Im still behind on comment responses, but I'm working through them!

 

Alex had no idea how long it took them, but by the time she, Kara, and Lena were finished working out n Maggie, it was deep in the night. She could see M’gann slouching against her staff, exhausted, and James rubbing at his eyes over the swelling.

Alex chastised herself over that. She’d been so focused on Maggie that she’d paid no attention to his injuries, which, no matter how minor by comparison, still needed attention and care. She would have gone to him just then, but Kara did first. He eyed her warily as she knelt in front of him, but didn’t pull away as she raised a hand to gently touch the swelling over his cheekbone. Wordlessly, she lay a hand on his jaw to keep his head still, and then very gently blew cold air over the inflammation. Then she picked up his hands, where his knuckles were swollen from punching and his wrists abraded from the rope, and she blew softly on them, too. She sat back on her heels and looked at him, then, waiting. Her hands rested on her knees. Would he deem her a monster--a good and fantastic beast, but a beast nonetheless? Would he fear her too much to let her close?

(Alex watched carefully, too, fully prepared to cast him back out into Armistice if he handled this poorly.)

He opened an arm to her, created a space for her to settle into his side. She didn’t smile when she took it, but her eyes closed and she let out a harsh breath of relief that made Alex smile, remembering how it had felt when Maggie had kissed her that night in the clinic. James pressed a kiss to Kara’s forehead and held her close, her head on his shoulder, and his over hers.

Alex grabbed a few more half-melted cold packs and handed them to Kara, who blew on them without moving until they were fully frozen in Alex’s hands. Of all of them, M’gann and Alex herself had emerged most unscathed, but M'gann had taken a good hit to the shoulder; Alex handed her a pack. She handed two to J’onn for his injuries, and pressed one to her own bruised forearm.

Winn had returned, assuring them that they should have an uninterrupted power flow for as long as it took the Current engineers to figure out the way he’d rewired the generator to the meter. He expected it would take them at least a few days after they noticed, and that might not happen for a week or two.

Maggie’s legs were thick with heavy splints and bandages. Under local anaesthetics, they’d reset her dislocated shoulder, set the broken fingers of her right hand with splints, and done what they could with the shattered left--which, Alex knew, probably wouldn’t restore much use to the hand. They’d managed to get an IV hooked up with a slow drip of saline to keep her hydrated. Maggie, throughout, had flirted with the edge of unconsciousness, kept awake by whomever happened to notice her slipping under.

But now, as she dozed, they let her. She had to sleep eventually, after all.

“She should be woken up regularly,” Lena said.

James said, “I’ll stay with her and do it.”

Lena waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll stay. It’s the least I can do.”

Alex laughed drily. “You did well today, Luthor, but you’re nuts if you think I’d leave you unobserved in my clinic with Maggie.”

“Well I’m not leaving you here with them!” Kara said, indignant.

J’onn spoke up. “I think we’re all staying here. Miss Luthor: you still owe us an explanation, but I’ve seen enough to trust that it can wait until daylight. Kara: help me bring the bedding down from upstairs?”

Kara stood, stretched, and shrugged. “I’ll just do it. Cat’s out of the bag, now, right?” And with that she tore off, returning seconds later with the mats and blankets from upstairs piled in her arms. They spread them out with the extra mats from the clinic until they had basically padded the whole floor. Alex, still wired from the focus of working on Maggie, volunteered to take the first watch at the door, and Lena said she’d take the first shift of waking Maggie. James and Kara took adjacent mats on the far side of the room but laid close to the seam between them, nder a shared blanket.

M’gann had been quiet all night, holding her post by the door, leaning on that staff. She offered the staff to Alex as Alex moved to take her place. Alex declined, only because she didn’t know how to use it.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Alex said quietly. “We’ve barely met, and you’ve put your neck on the line for us.”

M’gann smiled softly. “Let me ask you. Would you fight for me, now?”

Alex nodded emphatically. “Absolutely.”

“Would you have fought for me a week ago?”

Alex swallowed, then shrugged, and decided on honesty. “Not without a reason, probably.”

M’gann hummed in agreement. “I’ve always had to fight off thieves trying to get at my vegetables,” she said. “That’s how I learned to get good with the staff. But it was always just me, you know, fighting to stay alive. I’ve been alone up there for a long time.”

Alex inhaled sharply. She thought of her own loneliness, and she’d always had Kara and J’onn.

“Sometimes you have to gamble on people,” M’gann said, hefting her staff. As the shadow moved across her face, Alex suddenly saw her look older, her eyes more weary and wizened, her the lines at the corners of her mouth ever-so-slightly more deep-set. “You lot seemed like the best odds I was going to get.”

Alex offered her forearm. “You’ll never regret your bet if I can help it.”

M’gann gripped it tightly in return. Her eyes smiled.

The room settled into sleep except for Alex standing by the door and Lena sitting up beside Maggie. Lena had an hourglass, and whenever the sand ran through it she’d lean down over Maggie and rouse her gently. Alex felt a surge of relief every time she saw Maggie’s eyes flutter open, combined with a surge of something else -- something she refused to acknowledge as jealousy -- when Maggie did not startle at the sight of Lena’s face. When Maggie seemed to soothe, to relax, at the sight of Lena’s face.

At the third wake-up, Lena caught Alex staring. When she’d settled Maggie back down, let her close her eyes again, she turned the hourglass and then carefully stood up, picking her way across the row of sleepers to prop herself up against the doorframe, opposite Alex.

“If looks could kill, I’d have died a half-dozen times tonight,” Lena said, eyebrow arched.

Alex inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I can’t decide how much to trust you.”

“And you’re jealous of me,” Lena supplied. “You don’t need to be. It was never like that between her and me.”

Alex’s gut clenched, her fingernails pressing into her own palms, but she didn’t deny it. “What was it like, then?”

“We were lonely. We met at a celebration -- well, outside of it. We’d both slipped outside to escape the noise. We became fond of one another, and found our way, some weeks later, into my bed. And then we found our way back there, several times. The intimacy of it gave us both something we’d been craving. But there was never romantic love between us. There was… a kinship. A friendship that extended into the physical. But a friendship is what it is, at its foundation.”

“Her shoulder,” Alex said. “Her father dislocated her shoulder over you.”

Lena looked down, rubbed roughly at one eye with the back of her wrist, and nodded. “There was no telling what my mother would do to her, or to me, if she’d found out I’d been… involved… with someone so far beneath my station, and a woman, no less. And so Maggie took the fall. Painted herself into some kind of a predator, counting on the idea that her father would be too ashamed to tell my mother about it. She probably thought she was likely to end up dead either way, but that I’d be safe if my mother didn’t know. And she’d have been right, too, about her own outcome, if James hadn’t intervened when he did.”

When Lena looked up again, her eyes were wet and red. “I have never forgiven myself, Alex, for letting that happen. And I’ve spent every day since that day trying to make it up to her. I gave her antivirals when she asked for them--I think they were for you? And I did what I could to help obscure the water she was stealing for you. And when we found out my mother was hoarding Current chits, I worked with her to release them back out onto the Bridge, which was her idea. She didn’t care whether the Clans went to war, except insofar as you could so easily get caught in the crossfire. She told me she was going to leave, you know. She was going to come to you, to see if you’d have her back if she left Armistice, and she was going to steal a book to take with her. She said it was the most important book that anyone on the Bridge could possibly have. When she was caught trying to leave and was brought before my mother, the book was in her bag. I was going to try to stop the punishment but when I got close to her she begged me to save the book instead. She said the book would matter more to you, and to all of us, than she did. She made me promise her to save the book over her. And so I did, against every ounce of my better judgment.”

Alex tried to swallow, but found her mouth suddenly dry. “What book is it?”

Lena laughed quietly and passed a hand over her head.. “I don’t know, I can’t read it. She didn’t think it was anything valuable herself, at first, until she suddenly realized that it was. I don’t know what changed.”

“Where’s the book?” Alex asked.

“It’s somewhere safe,” Lena said. “I’ll go get it when I can get to it safely.”

“When will that be?”

“I might investigate tomorrow. But... I’ll need backup.”

She looked at Alex with the unspoken question in her eyes. But Alex refused to respond, instead letting the conversation lapse into silence. Lena fidgeted a little with the hourglass in her hands, and turned her attention back to Maggie.

“The love I have for Maggie isn’t the same as the love she has for you, or, I can see, the love you have for her,” she said, finally, as though the conversation had never drifted. “But it’s love, just the same.”

Against the wall, Maggie lay unmoving, deep in sleep. Beside her, James was snoring lightly, the rhythm of it somehow soothing Alex: the sound of breath was the sound of life.

Lena yawned.

“Let’s rotate,” Alex said. “I’ll take over waking her. I’ll get J’onn to take watch. You get some sleep.”

“You should be the one to get sleep,” Lena said. “You’ve had a harder day than me.”

But Alex shook her head. “I want to watch over her. I… need to.”

Lena smiled. She reached out a hand as if to touch Alex’s arm, and then pulled it back at the last second. Instead, she handed over the hourglass, and nodded.

When the hourglass ran out, Alex carefully stroked Maggie’s face, her head, and urged her awake.

With relief, she noticed that Maggie didn’t startle when she woke to see Alex’s face above her.

 

\--

 

In the morning, Kara and James stood watch outside together. Alex smiled when she spied them holding hands. Maggie was, to Alex’s great relief, more lucid when she was awake, but the greater lucidity brought with it a greater awareness of her pain and her injuries and her immobility. The swelling in her jaw had gone up as the injury had set in, and with they way they’d wrapped her head to support it, she could barely open her mouth. Her back hurt, but Alex braced it and encouraged her to sit up for some stretches anyway, to avoid muscle atrophy. Alex, Kara, and Lena took turns helping her through some range-of-motion exercises in her arms and, with great care, her splinted legs, to support those muscles, too.

Alex crushed two anti-inflammatory pain pills and dissolved them in some water, spooning the solution carefully through Maggie’s barely-parted lips. Lena diluted one of the IV nutrient packs in a sterile pot over the stove, then sealed it and set it aside to cool until it would be safe to hook up to Maggie’s line.

“I could chill that, you know,” Kara said, when she poked her head inside. “Just keep it sealed so it stays sterile while I blow on it.”

“Oh,” Lena said, in a strange, middling tone that reflected both the absurdity and the obviousness of the offer.

Kara blew on the sealed pot, and then Lena transferred the liquid to a sterile IV bag. Maggie slipped in and out of sleep, but it truly seemed like sleep, now, as opposed to the blank unconsciousness of the night before.

“I think she’s going to be okay,” Alex said, to herself as much as to anyone else who could hear her.

M’gann heard her and squeezed her shoulder.

Lena sat down opposite J’onn in a corner and he asked her question after question. M’gann crouched off his shoulder, leaning on her staff, listening, because, “You guys seem okay, but I’m not trusting your decision on her without hearing her story myself.”

After hours of conversation, Lena took a turn watching Maggie while J’onn and M’gann conferred.

The Bridge remained quiet for the day. Alex imagined that the news about Kara must be travelling across the Bridge, beyond Armistice to the other Clans, like a rat tracking disease. She glanced over at J’onn from time to time and he sat with his fingers steepled, pressed to his forehead, deep in thought.

When Maggie was dozing, Alex made her way over to him. “What are you thinking?”

“That we may become the common enemy that unifies the Clans,” he said.

Alex swallowed.

“What should we do?” Alex asked.

“I have a few ideas. None of them are great.” He sighed. “In the short term, I’m more worried about making sure that all… damn, seven? Of us have enough to eat. We have enough for a week or so if we ration carefully, but that’s not long. So the order of operations is: food in the short term, and then longer-term solutions.”

Alex nodded. “What about Lena’s book?”

“That’s the potential red herring in all of this,” J’onn said.

Alex furrowed her brow. There were herring in the river, and sometimes they were able to eat them, but they weren’t red.

J’onn, reading her confusion, chuckled lightly and clarified, “potential distraction,” he said, “unless, of course, it ends up being very important. We don’t know what it is, so I don’t know whether it’s worth taking the risk to go and retrieve.”

“Maggie says it’s important.”

“But how much do we trust Maggie in all this?”

Alex bit her lip and nodded grimly. The question wasn’t, ultimately, intended to be answered.

“What can I do?” she asked.

J’onn passed a hand over his face. “Lena says the book is hidden somewhere in Armistice territory, but not in one of its buildings. She wouldn’t be more specific than that--she’s using the information as leverage to keep us from throwing her out. If we’re lucky, Maggie will recover enough to tell us what the book is, so we can make an informed decision about whether it’s worth the risk to go get it. So you focus on Maggie, and make sure she pulls through. I’ll let you know when I need you for anything else.”

\--

That afternoon, J’onn, Kara, and James took their remaining red chits and went to Redsun. They came back with a tall stack of non-perishable rations -- far more than they should have been able to buy with the chits they had. Kara’s face was tight, and after setting the rations in the corner, she spoke softly to J’onn and went to stand guard outside, relieving M’gann.

Alex looked at James, asking with her eyes.

“Soon as she walked in, they basically started throwing stuff at us -- whatever we needed to get us out the door. They didn’t even want to take the chits.”

“Why didn’t you keep them, then?” Alex asked.

James asked. “I probably would have, to be honest, but Kara wouldn’t have it. She said she wasn’t here to scare people out of their food. So we just left them on the counter.”

Alex left James with Maggie and slipped outside. She didn’t see Kara at first, but then she looked up and found her sitting on the edge of the clinic roof.

“Drop a girl a rope?” Alex called softly.

Kara laughed drily. Without a word, she floated down and landed gently on her toes beside Alex.

“You were right that people would be scared of me,” Kara said. “I don’t like how it feels.”

The irony was palpable. Alex would love nothing more than to be feared by the Clans, to be handed whatever she wanted by virtue of walking into a room.

But Kara was kind, and gentle, and friendly, and so many other things that Alex was not.

“It’s on them,” Alex said quietly. “It’s not on you.”

Kara shrugged and nodded half-heartedly, arms wrapped around her own body.

“What are we going to do now?” Kara asked.

Alex wished she had an answer.

 


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But when she looked down at Maggie in moments like this, sleeping quietly, their history bubbled to the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ASDFIAOHDGHGIOFS shipsnthenight made art for this fic and it's [here](http://shipsnthenight.tumblr.com/post/164444201676/if-you-ship-sanvers-and-havent-read-tower-rats) and I am FLABBERGASTED it is the BEST look at Maggie with her swagger and her smirk and Alex with her stethoscope and her defensive gaze and her confident stance and the TATTOO IS PERFECT (no really that's exactly what I imagined) and they're so soft ACK I am over here DYING OF GAY.

When Alex went back inside, Maggie was awake. James was sitting with her, talking to her, and Maggie wasn’t responding, but her eyes were open and twinkling at him, and occasionally her lips twitched in the tiniest smiles.

“How are you, sleeping beauty?” Alex asked, crouching down beside James. The pain pills had probably kicked in by then, she thought.

Maggie licked her parched lips and whispered, just barely loud enough to hear, “bit better.”

“I was just telling her how I remembered the first time we trained together,” James said. “She had three left feet, would you believe it?”

Alex laughed. She couldn’t imagine a version of Maggie that lacked coordination.

“But she was a teenager,” James amended, “so I couldn’t blame her. I was barely out of my teens myself. Still, it’s nice to distract ourselves with those easier times.”

“Sit tight,” Alex said. “I have an idea.”

She slipped outside and climbed back up the tower to their room that was already gathering dust after days without use. She grabbed the books.

Back in the clinic, she cracked open _All Tomorrow’s Parties_ and began to read aloud. Maggie’s eyes slipped closed and she smiled ever so slightly.

Slowly, gradually, the people in the room began to notice what she was doing. M’gann’s eyes were wide; Winn’s were wider. (“Is she reading that?” Winn asked J’onn quietly, in disbelief.) Lena smirked a little, and J’onn smiled. James settled in, leaning more comfortably into the wall. Kara, from her post outside, cracked the door to listen more easily, even though she could hear just fine through the wall. And the room settled into quiet as Alex read to them.

 

\--

 

That evening, Alex insisted on the first shift of waking Maggie again. She sat near Maggie’s head, propped against the wall, hourglass beside her.

She looked down at Maggie’s face, where the swelling in her jaw had settled into a dark, brutal bruise. Alex couldn’t see the bloodied eye since Maggie was asleep, though she knew that that, at least, was beginning to improve just a little. Unable to help herself, she trailed a finger lightly over Maggie’s hairline, coaxing strands away from her face while she slept. Over the past day she’d been able to turn Maggie into a patient, in her mind. To partition injured-Maggie from Alex’s-former-lover Maggie. She could watch Lena set the epidural near the bend of the tail in the fish tattoo without thinking about how her own fingernails had dug into that tattoo in moments of ecstasy, giving texture to its scales.

But when she looked down at Maggie in moments like this, sleeping quietly, their history bubbled to the surface.

“You could have told me,” Alex whispered. “You told me you hated liars, but you kept so much from me that you could have shared.”

Maggie’s lips parted and her tongue peeked out to wet them. “Alex.” A harsh, quiet whisper.

Alex startled and rose up to her knees. Maggie’s eyelids opened, stiff and sticky, but they looked at Alex with clarity, and something like desperation. “Alex,” she rasped, again.

“Shhh,” Alex soothed, “don’t talk right now.”

But the smacking of Maggie’s dry lips came more insistently, more fervently, like she was working up to say something, and Alex’s protestations were doing nothing to stop her.

“Okay, okay,” Alex said, “wait.”  She pivoted and stretched out beside Maggie: a parody of the way they had lain together in this very spot, so many times before. She propped herself up on an elbow and brought her face close to Maggie’s. Maggie looked at her, as wide-eyed as she could manage, sad and hopeful.

“I was a liar,” Maggie whispered.

Alex flinched. “You were,” she said, somewhere between a query and a statement.

“I was,” Maggie affirmed again, nodding minutely, “but only to them. Not to you.”

“Maggie--”

“I hid things,” Maggie pressed on. “I--” She closed her mouth, trying to wet her tongue. Her eyes had become red-rimmed, tears gathering at the corners. Alex reached for the cup of ice chips nearby and slipped one past Maggie’s parched lips. Maggie sucked gratefully, rolling it around in her mouth. The ice in the cup was melting, half-water now, and Alex thought that she’d need to ask Kara to re-freeze it when she woke up.

“I hid things,” Maggie said again, her breath shaking, “I kept things from you. But everything I ever said to you, everything we had together, that was true.”

"You didn’t have to turn on us, though,” Alex murmured. “You didn’t have to become one of Luthor’s officers.”

“It was the best way I could think of to protect you without being near you,” Maggie rasped.

“You could have been near me,” Alex insisted. “We could have handled everything together.”

Maggie blinked hard and fast and shook her head again, just slightly, with sadness. “Okay,” she said, resigned.

She swallowed and closed her eyes, and Alex thought that was the end of it. She lay down on her side, alongside Maggie’s body, and waited for Maggie’s breathing to even out in sleep. But it didn’t.

“I still love you, Alex,” Maggie murmured, behind closed lids.

Alex didn’t know what made her gut twist more: the statement of love, the word “still” that implied it had always been true, or the nagging fear that it might be another lie.

“Sleep, Maggie,” Alex said.

Alex lay there, watching Maggie’s body settle, her face go lax in profile.

“She means it.”

Lena was lying on the next mat over, but apparently had not yet fallen asleep, and had overheard everything.

Alex didn’t respond.

 

\--

 

By the fifth day of their encampment in the clinic, the tenuous ceasefire of the Clans holding around them, Maggie was fully lucid when she was awake, which was more than she’d been for the previous days, though she still slept more often than not. The fracture in her jaw still made speech difficult, the bandages making it worse, but when she was awake her vision and focus were clear, and her hearing unimpaired.

After some morning tests, where Maggie smiled at Alex’s platitudes while Alex checked her vision and reflex responses, Alex left Maggie under James’ watch and went to take a seat beside J’onn.

“She’s getting better,” she said.

“Good,” J’onn smiled.

Alex ran a palm over her hair. She felt they were in a strange holding pattern, barricaded in the clinic as they were with no obvious plan to move forward. “We can’t last like this,” she said finally. “I know it. Which means I’m sure you know it.”

J’onn hummed his agreement. “The Clans will start fighting again. It might take another hour or it might take another ten days, but it’ll happen. Their fear has subdued them for now, but it also means that when they start swinging again, they’ll swing with twice the violence.”

“We shouldn’t move Maggie for at least a few more days if we can help it,” Alex said.

“Move her,” J’onn echoed. “Where would we move her to?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. Off the Bridge?”

“To go where?”

Alex bit her lip and looked down. Indeed, where?

“Is Maggie awake?” J’onn asked, looking across at her over Alex’s shoulder. Alex turned. Based on James’ body language as he spoke to Maggie, she guessed that Maggie was still awake and listening.

“I think so,” Alex said.

J’onn stood slowly and picked his way across the ocean of bedding to crouch by Maggie’s head, Alex right behind him.

“Maggie,” J’onn said gently. “Can you answer me if I ask you a question?”

Maggie licked her cracked lips and said, clearly but quietly, “I’ll try.”

“This book that Lena’s hidden. Is it valuable to us?”

Maggie’s eyes widened and she nodded, and then winced against the movement. “Very.”

“Why?” J’onn asked.

“I think it can help us to get off the Bridge,” Maggie said, with more strength and clarity than anything she’d said so far.

“How?” J’onn asked.

Maggie shook her head a little and offered a sad half-smile, constrained in her bandages. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s… a different kind of book. It took me forever to figure it out but I bet you’ll understand it as soon as you see it.” She reached out a bandaged hand and rested it against J’onn’s forearm where it was propped on his knee. Her eyes flitted up to Alex’s and locked there for a second, longing, before sliding back to J’onn’s. “Have Lena get it, J’onn,” she said, “it’s worth the risk.”

J’onn tightened his jaw and nodded, once. He turned and looked at Alex over his shoulder. “I’ll talk to Lena to make a plan to retrieve it with her. You be prepared to hold down the fort while we’re gone.”

Alex inhaled deeply and let it out through her nose. When she looked over at Maggie, Maggie was looking up at her, eyes wide and sad.

J’onn and Lena made a plan to retrieve the book from its hiding place that night, when the Bridge was largely asleep.

“What do we do if you don’t come back?” M’gann asked, when J’onn announced the plan as she worked on distributing morning rations.

“I don’t know,” J’onn said grimly. “But I don’t know what we’ll do if we _do_ come back. I don’t know if we’ll get anything useful out of this book. So you’ll be no worse off.”

Alex scoffed.

Kara had taken to spending most of her time outside, often sitting on the clinic roof. At night, she’d sleep beside James, and sometimes he’d come and sit with her outside, but she seemed to like to be alone there, sitting guard.

Alex left Maggie to be supervised by James and Lena and brought two rations outside.

“Hungry?” she asked.

Kara looked down from her perch and smiled, just slightly. She bent down as far as she could, her stomach pressed to her thighs, and took the bowl of rice and vegetables that Alex held up for her, and then she took Alex’s bowl, and then she offered Alex her hand and helped to hoist her up onto the roof alongside her.

“Current and Risen started getting feisty this morning,” Kara said. She took a bite, chewed it, and swallowed. “I flew over there for a minute and just… hovered over them, trying to look stern. It worked. Everybody left.”

Alex took her own first bite at “Current” and stopped chewing at “I flew over there.” Eyes widened at her sister, she swallowed her mouthful roughly, and said, “You went over there by yourself? _Without telling anyone_?”

Kara shrugged. “What would you have done if I’d told you? Come with me? I love you, Alex, but you can get hurt, and I can’t. You might have just been a liability.”

“I want to know where you are,” Alex insisted. “I might have been okay with you going alone, but--”

“No, you wouldn’t have been.”

Alex sighed. “I wouldn’t have been,” she conceded. “But even if I had, I would have wanted someone to take over the watch, and I would have wanted to know when I needed to start worrying about you--”

“The point right now,” Kara interjected, “is that they’re starting to fight again.”

They ate side by side in silence for several minutes. When they were done, Kara stacked their bowls and spoons and set them aside, and then slumped down onto Alex’s shoulder.

“I’m scared, Alex.”

Alex thought of the young girl clutching her arm as they walked together to buy water from Armistice, all those years ago.

“I’m scared too,” she said. “Maybe that book… the Armistice book… who knows.”

“I’m afraid of the idea of being here when the Clans go to war,” Kara said, “but I might be even more afraid of the idea of trying to get off the Bridge. But one or the other of those will happen. Right?”

Alex didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

“Whatever we do, we do it together,” she said, instead, offering a hand. Kara tooked it, her grip firm and warm.

They sat quietly together on the rooftop, surveying the uneventful landscape, for a long time, until the sun crept close to its xenith. And then suddenly, Kara straightened, her eyes turned over toward the Windside end of the bridge. “Something’s happening,” she said, squinting. “They’ve opened the gate, and there are people…” she trailed off, eyes showing the strange focused-unfocus that indicated that she was using her x-ray vision. And then, just as suddenly, her gaze focused again, turning to meet Alex’s. Alex imagined she looked as perplexed as she felt.

“We need to get over there,” Kara said suddenly, urgently. “All of us. Maybe even Maggie, if we can move her.”

Kara and Alex slipped off the roof and ducked back into the clinic. Maggie’s legs were setting nicely, her arm in a sling to protect her shoulder and collarbone. James helped her to sit up while Alex and Lena fitted her with a stiff back brace to protect her spine. With that, James was able to pick Maggie up, cradling her against his broad chest.

“Let me know if you need me to take a turn carrying her,” Kara offered. James smiled and said, “I think we’ll be okay.”

As they began the short walk to the Windside end, Alex suddenly heard the squeal of a newly powered-up bullhorn, and a muffled voice on the other side of it, in a language she didn’t understand but that still sounded familiar.

She glanced sidelong at Kara.

“ _Attention Bridge people_ ,” the voice said, more clearly now, in their language, heavily accented. “ _We are representatives of the nations East and West of this mighty river, and one representative from among your own people.”_

“Oh my God,” Kara said quietly, over and over. “Oh my God, Oh my God, oh my God--” she broke into a jog. Alex, feeling protective of Maggie, hung back with James, but J’onn took off running after Kara.

“She just, like, goes for it, doesn’t she?” Winn asked, from Alex’s elbow.

Alex laughed drily and shrugged. “She didn’t used to.”

“ _We have come to announce the glorious resolution of the longstanding war between our nations. A war that has claimed countless lives, military and civilian.”_

Alex expected to see a crowd as they approached the Leeside end of the bridge, but a crowd is not what she found. Kara was standing there already, and as Alex came to stand beside her, only a handful of representatives for each Clan straggled over.

_“A war that has trapped you on this Bridge for generations innumerable.”_

One of them, Alex noticed, was Mike, from Armistice. He held up a pointed finger and mimed shooting her, and then Maggie, and then Kara, and then blew on his fingertip like a character in an old vid would have blown on the end of a hot pistol. Alex rolled her eyes and looked away, toward the sound of the voice, magnified through a bullhorn. Three people stood there, all men, all wearing finer clothing than Alex had ever seen even the high members of the Clans wearing. The one with the bullhorn was tall and blonde and beautiful in a boring kind of way. The man to his right was shorter and bald, his age hard to determine. The one to his left--

_“It is our hope that in this new era of peace,”_

Alex locked eyes with him.

She’d know those eyes anywhere, though she’d never thought she’d see them again.

“Dad?”

“ _You will feel welcome to move freely among us on the land--”_

He stared back at her, squinting, almost uncomprehending. Alex herself couldn’t quite believe herself--it had been so long, a decade, since he had left, and she’d been so very, very sick at the time. Was she imagining things? Had the stress of these past days pushed her up to and over the limit?

But then:

“Jeremiah,” J’onn said, beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“ _And to contribute your skills and experiences for the betterment of all--”_

Jeremiah grabbed the shoulder of the man with the bullhorn, silencing him. Wordlessly, he walked a step, and then another, and another. He paused for a moment where the grass of the land met the concrete of the Bridge. Just a fraction of an instant, so brief that only a Bridge-dweller would notice, and then stepped across the line.

He stopped in front of her.

“Alex,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm behind on responding to the (truly mind-boggling and wonderful) comments on the last chapter -- but I will get to all of them, I promise. I wanted to get this chapter up with my time today in the hope that I'll be able to get to chapter 21 quickly.
> 
> Without spoiling too much, I'll just say: I think you'll like chapter 21. A lot of questions that have lingered since chapter 13 will be answered in chapter 21. But other things had to happen before we could get there. I'll get it up as quickly as I can, I promise.
> 
> Unrelated: does anybody know how to fix the weird spacing issues that crop up around the punctuation in italicized text, without having to go through and manually delete all the extra spaces after you paste your stuff in?


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the time I made the additions, revisions, clarifications to this chapter last night, it shifted from being a long-but-still-reasonable chapter to being a chapter that's more than double the length of most of the chapters in this thing. I thought about splitting it. Then I read some Sanvers spoiler news that upset me and went SCREW IT, GIVE THE GAYS WHAT THEY WANT.
> 
> So this chapter is over 6000 words. I'm sorry, or you're welcome, as it applies to you.
> 
> As a sidenote: building up the tension and drama in this kind of story is the easy part. Resolving it in a way that feels satisfying and balanced is much, much harder. We begin an important part of that resolution here, and I hope it's satisfying for you. I am always open to constructive criticism, gently and politely delivered, if you feel the occasion warrants it, as long as it's stuff I can apply to later chapters and doesn't imply that you want me to rework what I've already posted. :)

Alex swallowed and looked at her father. He was stockier than he’d been when they’d last seen one another, his hair flecked with grey at the temples. His mouth, she noticed, was a little askew, as though he’d had muscle or tissue damage to one side of his face.

He lifted a hand as though to touch her cheek, and then hesitated. Alex didn’t move to encourage or discourage the touch.

“You lived,” he said.

She nodded. “I lived.”

“So did you.” That was Kara, from beside her, and Alex flinched. For a moment, Alex had forgotten about Kara; had forgotten about Maggie and James and J’onn, all standing around her.

Jeremiah’s hand fell back to his side.

“It’s been some time, Jeremiah,” J’onn said moving forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Alex.

“And you kept your promise,” Jeremiah said.

J’onn’s brow furrowed and he set his jaw. “Of course I did. To the best of my ability, anyway.”

“He’s been our family,” Alex said. She felt… numb? As though she were watching herself talking to her father a decade after his disappearance. Any wit, or forethought, or afterthought--any operations beyond mere functioning--seemed beyond her.

Her father was alive. After a decade, her father was alive.

“Get a room, you dirty climbers!” yelled a woman in Risen colors.

Jeremiah laughed a little, softening the tension, and flitted his eyes in the direction of the yell. “I guess that much hasn’t changed.”

Alex shrugged. “Guess not.”

“Don’t go anywhere, okay?” he said. “I have to--I mean, I came here for a reason--but don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back.”

“Okay,” Alex said. Kara slipped an arm over her shoulders and held her close.

As he walked away, back toward the man with the bullhorn and the woman standing beside him, to their indulgent faces, James said, quietly, “Who was that?”

Alex didn’t feel like she could answer. She didn’t feel like she knew, anymore.

“Her father,” Kara said. And Alex was suddenly struck by the extent to which he had ignored Kara, even though he’d raised her for years, too, before he (died) left.

“Our father,” Alex corrected.

But Kara could only chuckle. “Your father, just now.”

“I thought your father was dead,” Maggie rasped from James’ arms, and Alex could only laugh drily. “So did we.”

The man with the bullhorn lifted it again and asked, through it, “Is anyone else coming?”

Alex looked around, and the people beside her did the same. Beyond them, there were only a few scattered representatives from each Clan, no more than a half-dozen in each color, each clustered carefully with their own and apart from the others.

“Where’s Lena?” Kara asked suddenly.

Alex looked around. Sure enough: Lena wasn’t standing among them.

Alex seethed. “If she went running back to Mommy after all this--”

“She didn’t,” Maggie interrupted, with more confidence than anything she’d said since they’d come back to the clinic.

James nodded, shifting Maggie more firmly into his arms. “What happened to Maggie would be nothing compared to what would happen if Armistice got ahold of Lena now.”

Alex scoffed. “Her own mother, really?”

“Really,” Maggie said, dead serious. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”

In front of them, the land-dweller looked confused, the bullhorn half-raised to his mouth, Jeremiah’s hand on his forearm keeping it from going the rest of the way up.

“This is stupid,” Kara said. She walked fearlessly toward the visitors and held out her hand for the bullhorn. The blond man furrowed his brow at her, and she said something to him in a language Alex didn’t understand. Whatever it was made Jeremiah grin and nod, and the man’s jaw drop. He handed over the bullhorn. Kara took it and, without warning, jumped straight up into the sky and tore off, flying, toward the far end of the Bridge.

“Holy shit,” Maggie said, tipping her head up to watch Kara disappear, until her contracted muscles tweaked her healing spine and she grunted softly in pain.

“Don’t do that,” Alex said, “it’ll be months, probably, before you can tip your head back that far.”

Maggie looked at her, blinking widely. “But she just--”

“I know.”

"I thought I hallucinated that she flew with me."

Alex could only smile tightly and shrug. 

“What is she?” Maggie asked.

Alex glanced over at the Leesider and the Windsider talking in low, wondering tones with her father. She turned her head a little further and saw Mike and his cluster of Armistice speaking in quiet, frantic tones, and beyond them, the members of the other Clans doing the same thing.

“Special,” is what she said, to Maggie.

Far away, they heard the sound of Kara’s voice over the bullhorn, too distant to parse.

“What’s--what’s she doing?” Winn asked. Alex could only shrug.

“What she does best,” J’onn said. Alex looked up at him to find him grinning as widely as she’d ever seen. “She’s bringing people together.”

They heard Kara’s amplified voice again, closer this time.

“Any person who comes to the Leeside end of the Bridge to hear our visitors does so under my protection,” she said. “I am calling for, and enforcing, a ceasefire. Any person who comes to the Leeside end of the Bridge to hear our visitors does so under my protection. I am calling for, and enforcing, a ceasefire.” She said it again, and again, a refrain that got louder as it got closer.

“Whoa,” M’gann said suddenly, looking down at her feet. Alex could feel it too: the vibrations of growing numbers of people moving, the ground rumbling with them. And then people began to emerge from between the buildings like water seeping through cracks: first a trickle, then a flood, packing forward toward the edge of the concrete, shuffling Alex and James and J’onn and Winn and M’gann forward like a tide pushing pebbles. With a rush of wind, Kara landed beside the land-dweller, one hand outstretched to hand the bullhorn back, the other wrapped firmly around the waist of Lena Luthor, who was grinning so widely that Alex thought her cheeks might crack.

“Jealous!” Winn said quietly, with amazement. “Think she’d take me flying?”

“You’re a filthy traitor, Lena Luthor,” hollered Mike, to cheers from his friends, “My life would be set if I put you down right now!”

Kara wheeled on him, her eyes filling with red fire. “The ceasefire applies to everyone,” she growled. He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, hands held up by his shoulders, a parodically exaggerated “ _No harm intended_ ” gesture that made Alex want to punch him in the face.

“He’s repulsive,” Maggie said, just loud enough for Alex and James to hear. “Don’t let him get to you.”

Finally, the Windsider lifted the bullhorn again and began to speak, reading from a sheet of paper he held in his hand.

“ _We are representatives of the nations East and West of this mighty river, and one representative from among your own people. We have come to announce the glorious resolution of the longstanding war between our nations. A war that has claimed countless lives, military and civilian. A war that has trapped you on this Bridge for generations innumerable. It is our hope that in this new generation of peace, you will feel free to move among us on land, and to contribute your skills and experiences for the betterment of all._ ”

Jeremiah stood beside the speaker with his arms clasped behind him, grinning with enough pride to imply that he, himself, was responsible for this ceasefire. Alex glanced up at J’onn and was surprised to see his brow furrowed.

“It’s not this easy,” he muttered to her, under his breath. “It can’t possibly be this easy.”

“ _We have established a plan for integrating Bridge people into both countries effective the first of next month_ ,” the man continued.

“What does ‘the first of next month’ mean?” Winn asked quietly.

“ _Priority will be given to those who will be easiest to integrate: those in good health, with skills valuable to our communities, and whenever possible, with social or family ties to people on land, as well as the immediate family members of those people_.”

“There it is,” J’onn muttered, as a murmur rushed through the crowd.

“ _Individuals in need of professional training or medical care, or with physical impediments that will slow their integration, will come later._ ”

In the corner of her eye, Alex saw Kara flinch and then put a hand on Maggie’s ankle.

“ _Anyone with a criminal conviction or arrest warrant in either country should note that the achievement of peace does not negate crimes committed during wartime. Our peace treaty includes an extradition agreement, so anyone with criminal debts to pay will be compelled to pay them when they leave the Bridge._ ”

Alex felt J’onn tense beside her. She put a hand on his forearm. “We’ll stay here,” she said, “or we’ll find another solution.”

“ _All people will be compelled to leave the Bridge over the course of our integration process, as our ultrasonic and satellite imagery have indicated it to be structurally unsound. It will be demolished, and with it the division and isolation it has come to represent, and we will replace it with a new, more-functional Bridge that will represent the new unity of our nations._ ”

“They can’t do that,” Lena said, indignantly.

“Watch them,” J’onn replied with terse resignation.

“ _In one week, representatives from both nations will return to begin receiving integration applications and to administer the necessary health screenings and inoculations that will be required for all new arrivals._ ”

“What’s a week?” Winn asked.

“ _Thank you, and welcome to this new world_.”

Silence hung over the Bridge as the three visitors gazed out on the crowd. After a moment, a few quiet voices rose above, and then a few more, until the noise rose to deafening levels, so loud that Alex only noticed Maggie’s pained whimper because she happened to be looking at her as she pressed one ear to James’ chest and raised one bandaged hand to ineffectually cover the other.

“Shit,” Alex cursed, tugging off her overshirt and rolling it to wrap around Maggie’s head to help block out the noise; M’gann, the only other person with a removable layer, shucked out of her jacket and offered it as well.

“We have to get her out of here,” Lena mouthed, and Alex was grateful that she didn’t try to shout over the din. Around them, the crowd was pushing forward, encroaching on the guests who had begun to retreat--including, Alex noticed, her father, retreating back toward the gate, away from the Bridge that had been his home for so, so many years.

He’d said he’d be right back. Just a moment ago, he’d said they should wait for them, and that he’d come back.

Alex should not have been surprised to see him walk away.

Somebody threw something--a chunk of metal that hit the concrete with a clang--and Kara bolted forward, putting herself between the mob and the outsiders just in time for another piece of debris to bounce off her shoulder and fall harmlessly to the floor.

“Let them go!” she shouted, raising herself up into the air again. Someone with a Redsun headband raised a hand with something to throw and immediately, moving faster than anyone could see, Kara was on top of her, taking the bit of scrap pipe before it could be launched. She flew up again.

“Go home!” she cried. “I will hold this peace until you all go home!”

It was enough. The crowd, anxious and stressed and tense, began to slowly trickle its way back through the buildings through which it had arrived. When she came back to their ragtag group, James had sat down on the concrete, hunched over Maggie in his lap, with everyone else crowded around her, a physical barrier between her and the noise and chaos causing her so much pain. Alex held a wad of cloth to the ear that wasn’t pressed to James’ chest, and she carefully ran the fingers of the other hand over Maggie’s scalp, encouraging her to relax.

When Kara arrived, J’onn and Winn moved over to create space for her. She crouched beside Alex and blew on her own hand. When it was cold, she pressed her palm to Maggie’s furrowed forehead.

“Let me take her,” Kara said. She looked at Alex. “I’ll take her home. It’ll be quieter.”

Alex looked down at Maggie, who was in too much pain to respond. So she looked at James instead, who nodded, and lifted Maggie’s legs a little to make space for Kara to slide her arms underneath, alongside his. Maggie didn’t struggle as she was moved from James’ arms to Kara’s, or as Alex coaxed her arm around Kara’s neck.

“See you in a few minutes,” Alex said. Kara nodded and leapt into the sky, with Maggie cradled close.

Alex stood and turned around, staring out at the expanse of grass heading out toward the Windside gate, which was closed. She remembered being fourteen and seeing Kara out in the middle of this field. Now, she saw nobody there--not the Leeside or the Windside representatives. Not her father.

As the crowd thinned, Alex’s bedraggled crew made their way back to the clinic. For a moment, Alex panicked when she opened the door to find it empty. Then she remembered more clearly what Kara had said: “I’ll take her home.”

“I think they’re upstairs,” she said to J’onn, who nodded.

“They won’t have any mats up there,” he said, as she grabbed a bottle of high-dose ibuprofen and went to fill a flask with water from a pouch that Kara had flown down to fill the night before. He grabbed a mat from the end of the row on the clinic floor and rolled it up. “I’ll come with you.”

“Can I come too?” James asked.

J’onn nodded. “Grab a pillow and blanket.”

The long climb back up the tower felt like revisiting an old friend, after so many days of living at ground level. Alex tugged the door open and ducked inside. Kara was sitting cross-legged on the floor, Maggie held in her lap. Maggie’s eyes were flinched closed.

“Oh, good,” Kara said quietly. “I forgot we didn’t have any mats left up here.”

J’onn and James made up the bed while Alex coaxed Maggie to take the medicine. Kara settled her under the blanket when the bed was ready, and then they all sat quietly until Maggie’s breath evened out in sleep. It didn't take long.

Kara looked around the room and then laughed quietly. “Like old times, with the five of us.” Her eyes settled a moment too long on James, who smiled at her.

“Except totally different,” Alex said drily.

Silence hung heavy in the room, broken only by Maggie's heavy breathing and the rumble of voices from far below them.

“I’m nervous about the clinic,” J’onn said. “I should probably head back down.”

“I’ll come with you,” Alex said.

No you won’t,” Kara said. “You need to stay here with Maggie until she wakes up.”

“But--”

“No buts, Alex,” Kara insisted. “She needs someone with medical training with her, and I can do more to stop fights and riots down there than you can. I’m going, you’re staying.”

Alex looked helplessly at James.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, “I don’t know anything about concussions and stuff.”

“Kara’s right,” J’onn said, “and I need to meet with Lena to find that book.”

So, a few minutes later, Alex found herself alone with a sleeping Maggie.

Or at least, she thought she was sleeping until she heard her say, hoarsely, her voice muted from the bandage around her chin: “So you drew the short straw, eh?”

Alex swallowed her retort. “You should go back to sleep,” she said, as softly as she could manage.

“Wasn’t sleeping,” Maggie said. “I feel a bit better now. Thanks for the meds.”

Alex shrugged, knowing that Maggie, lying with her back to the room, wouldn’t see it.

“J’onn and Lena are getting the book?” Maggie asked quietly.

“Apparently,” Alex said. “I wish you’d just tell us what it was, so we could decide whether it was worth the risk.”

“I would if I could,” Maggie said. “It took me ages to figure out how to understand it, and I just… don’t have the words to explain it to you. It’s not in our language but I was able to decode parts of it anyway.”

Maggie was talking too much, with that broken jaw. But she was talking, answering the questions Alex had wanted to ask, and so Alex couldn’t keep herself from pushing on. “What else was in Luthor’s books, Maggie?”

Maggie shifted, parts of herself seeming to tug against other parts of herself, and Alex realized she was trying to roll over.

“Don’t do that,” Alex said, but Maggie retorted with as much indignation as her hushed voice could manage, “I want to talk to you, not this wall.” So Alex sighed and scooted over, bracing Maggie with her hands until she was settled on her back.

Maggie looked up at Alex with puzzled eyes. The burst vessel that had flooded one eye with red had healed, and the sclera was gradually clearing. The bruising at her jaw was fading from black to purple and red and sickly green. She was healing, Alex thought. Slowly, steadily. She was healing.

Maggie said, “I thought I told you already, up on top of the tower: I couldn’t tell you what the books say.”

And that flash of tenderness Alex had felt a moment earlier vanished. She bit back a growl of frustration. “Why? Do you still have loyalty to her, after she--”

“No, Alex,” Maggie said, wincing a little as she pushed her voice through her clenched teeth. “I literally couldn’t tell you. None of her books were in our language. When I’d meet with her to talk about books, I’d just… make stuff up, most of the time.”

Alex felt as though the floor had shifted under her, a brief moment of panic making her wonder if her home had come loose from the tower.

“Why?” she asked, trying not to choke. She shouldn’t be asking this. She shouldn’t be making Maggie talk this much. But the answers she’d wanted, the answers she’d been craving: here Maggie was, offering them.

Maggie lifted a bandaged hand and pawed at the bandage supporting her jaw. “Loosen this?”

“Maggie--”

“Please, Alex. Just for awhile. Just to talk. Please.”

Alex’s professional judgment warred with her personal wishes until, finally, she sighed and reached forward, loosening the bandage a little. “Gently and quietly,” she admonished.

Maggie opened and closed her mouth, feeling the limits of her extra freedom. Quietly and gently, as ordered, she said to Alex: “I lied to Luthor about the books because I was scared, and selfish, and so completely in love with you.”

The apparent non-sequitur was enough to make Alex cough out a laugh. “I don’t follow,” she said.

Maggie swallowed and inhaled a deep, shaky breath. She stared up into the middle distance, her eyes unfocused. “When I try to think about how to be good person, I think about James,” she said. “I try to do the things I think he would do, because he’s just--he’s maybe the only truly good person I’ve ever met, beginning to end, head to toe. Him, and your sister.”

Alex found that, apart from James’ keeping secrets on Maggie’s behalf, she agered.

“James said to me once that the only time you should ever lie is to protect a more important truth,” Maggie continued. “I lied so much, to so many people. But you--you were the truth I was trying to protect.”

The pounding of Alex’s heart, the racing of her pulse, were so powerful she felt her whole body vibrated with them. “I don’t know what that means.”

“James told me he told you what happened with my Dad, with--with Lena,” Maggie said.

Alex nodded.

“I wanted to be with you, Alex,” Maggie whispered, behind closed eyes, as though she were afraid to say it. “But when I tried to be with Lena, it almost got us both killed. Even though we weren’t anything serious to each other, and our only crime was that she was so far above my station. You were very, very serious to me, Alex, and you were outside the Clan. If any of them--Luthor, my father, Mike, any of the rank and file--if any of them had figured out how I felt about you, about what we were doing together, I’d have been thrown over the side in a second for--well, they’d say it was for being a security risk to the Clan, but really it would be because they don’t see the Unaligned as fully human. I wasn’t joking about that. They’d think me repulsive for loving you.”

Alex’s gut twisted in rage and disgust. She clenched her fists around the loose fabric at the knees of her pants and forced herself to keep listening.

“I already knew I was falling for you when you kissed me, that night, after the--the chocolate,” Maggie confessed. “I thought I could live with it until I found out you had feelings for me, too. And then I just--I couldn’t expose you to that risk. So I ran. And then--well. Have you ever looked at the roof of the Armistice barracks?”

Alex frowned. “Sure.”

“It has words on it,” Maggie said. “For months after I started reading with you, I didn’t notice, because I had seen that roof every day of my life and, you know, it’s hard to see familiar things in new ways. But then one day I was walking by and I just… saw the words up there. I know the roof is made from metal that was part of the Bridge. They say that green metal is where Armistice got our green color. So I started trying to figure out what the words were.

“One day, Luthor saw me looking. And she figured out what I was doing. She knew I’d been training with J’onn, and she assumed he could read because she knew he was a Leesider. So she saw I could read, at least a little, and ordered me to look at her books. When I couldn’t read any of them, she suggested I go back to you and J’onn. That I keep learning until I knew enough to read her books to her.”

Alex swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat. It had been that long, truly. Maggie had been working for Luthor since before she had helped Alex through her sickness. Since before they had dropped together. Since before….

“I missed you,” Maggie said wetly, “And all I could think was, here was an excuse to spend more time with you without worrying what Luthor was going to think about it. And she didn’t know how books worked. She didn’t know that no amount of learning to read would make me able to understand a new language. So I agreed to what she said. And then as time went on, I started making things up about the books, to keep her believing that I was learning things from you. So I could spend all the time with you that I wanted, and know that we were both safe from her.”

Alex’s stomach was winding itself into a tighter and tighter knot. She pulled her knees up to her chest, as if to relieve some of the tension in her muscles. “Then why did you say those horrible things about me to your friends?”

Maggie coughed a laugh, and then winced against the pain it caused (“Be careful,” Alex said). “I wouldn’t call them my friends,” she said, “But they figured out I was sleeping with you. Mike and them. And they… sort of knew I was working for Luthor, but also knew that, you know, having sex with you probably wasn’t part of the order. So they started teasing me about it. Nothing would have painted a target on both of our backs--mine and yours--more than admitting that you were important to me. They’d have assumed I was betraying the Clan and they’d have thrown me over for it, and they’d have assumed you knew Clan secrets so they would have thrown you over too, and maybe Kara and J’onn and even James, just to cover all their bases. I didn’t know Kara was--that she could --” she stuttered, not knowing the words, and then rushed on, “So I told them what they wanted to hear, over and over again. That it was just meaningless sex, that you didn’t matter. Even though it made me sick to say, I said it, because it meant I could still be with you without putting you in danger from them.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me all of this?” Alex asked. Her voice shook in her chest like a raindrop clinging to a ledge before falling.

Maggie sniffed. Alex saw, with some gratification, that she, too, looked like she was fighting not to cry.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said, honestly. “I hated that I had to do it? I was embarrassed for myself? When you found out, I swear I would have explained if you’d just _asked_ me--”

“ _No_ ,” Alex interrupted harshly, “you don’t get to blame me for how I responded to how angry and insulted and _humiliated_ I was to hear that I’d--that I’d been _manipulated_ into falling in love with you.”

“I know,” Maggie said, desperate and placating, “and I don’t mean to. I should have come clean so much earlier, but,” she laughed drily, “I was so afraid you’d leave me. And then you came into Armistice, guns blazing, and if I’d told you the truth then, in front of everyone, I’d have gotten us both killed. And I just… realized how selfish I’d been, all at once. You made me so happy. Not just you, but Kara and J’onn and the little…I don’t know. Group? We had with James.”

“Family,” Alex filled in. “We made a family, the five of us.”

Maggie carefully rolled onto her side and blinked at Alex overtop of her bandaged hands from where they rested on the mat near her face. “Did we? I used to use that word in my head, sometimes, when I thought about us all together. It felt… like a secret. Like I’d make it go away if I said it out loud. I felt selfish, because you had become a family to me, and I thought, family don’t put each other in danger just so they can be together. Family put each other before themselves--that’s what James always said about his dad, back before he died. So I did what I realized I had to do, and I took away the danger that I’d put you in by being near you. I let you hate me so that you’d stay away.”

“God,” Alex hissed. She was crying now, brushing tears from her cheeks with a knuckle. “That’s not how family works, Maggie. You don’t get to just _opt out_ because the risk of loving people is too high. You tell them about the dangers and you _let them help you_. That’s what a fucking family does, Maggie.”

Maggie looked helpless. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to be part of a family, Alex. I never really had one before.”

In her mind’s eye, Alex saw Maggie dangling in her father’s grip, over the Bridge railing and hundreds of feet of nothing empty space.

Alex sniffed harshly and looked around for a tissue or a clean rag. They’d all been brought down to the clinic. Frustrated, she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Why did you keep helping Luthor?” she asked. “After we ended things. You were a lieutenant, what, a month later?”

“She’d started talking about her plan for taking over Current long before you and I broke up,” Maggie said, with a slight shrug of one shoulder, followed by a hiss and a wince of pain. (“Don’t do that,” Alex said.) “I didn’t want a war. And I wanted to be able to protect you, and J’onn, and Kara, and James, if one was going to break out. So I stayed close to her. I started working with Lena to figure out what to do to offset it. Lena started getting Current chits to me. And I worked with James to get them to you.”

That, somehow, was the easiest, cleanest point in Maggie’s whole, convoluted story.

“How did that--” Alex swallowed hard. The memory of a bloodied, beaten Maggie slumped on the floor was burned into her mind, vivid as an image on a vid screen in her mind. “Luthor called you a traitor. Lena said you were going to leave Armistice when they caught you. What--what happened?”

Maggie swallowed hard and closed her eyes, steeling herself again. “I had been trying to prevent a war because I was so sure that you’d be caught in the crossfire if one broke out,” she said. “But I failed. The war started anyway, that night. And the one true thing my dad ever taught me was that if you’re in a war, you have to pick a side, and the side you pick has to be the one you’d die for.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at Alex. “I didn’t want to give my life for Armistice. If I was going to die in a war on this Bridge, it had to be for you.”

Alex’s heart pounded in her chest. She looked down and could see her pulse thrumming in her wrists and palms. She swallowed, and her throat felt thick.

“I’d figured out the book a few weeks earlier,” Maggie continued. “I just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I’d been holding onto it, telling Luthor I was working on it. And then they started fighting and I knew: I had to take it and I had to get it to you and J’onn. So that night I tried to pack some stuff and sneak out while Current and Risen were fighting. But I got caught. Mike. And he shouted to the goon squad and I held the first guy off okay on my own--you taught me well--but then there were three and four and more of them. James tried to help me, but there were too many of them, and they were too big. Someone called the Luthors. Lillian figured out what was happening, and Lena did too. Lillian started yelling about her book, and Lena grabbed my bag before anyone else and searched it and pretended not to find anything. I think she thought maybe they’d let me off with the beating I took during the fight, but--”

Maggie stopped talking and gasped sharply, wincing into the memories in her mind.

“It’s okay,” Alex whispered, “you don’t have to talk about it.”

But Maggie shook her head tightly and pushed on. “They kept hitting me to get me to tell them where the book was. Kicking me with those boots. I was tied up. I couldn’t do anything. I might have given in if I could have told them. But I didn’t even know where it was since Lena had taken it away. She--she stopped them once. Got me alone, gave me some water, told me she was going to pretend to find the book somewhere in her mother’s room and make this all stop, if I could just hold out a little bit longer. I told her no. I told her I was--I told her to let it play out and then get the book to you, so you could use it to get away. So--so she did.”

Something about Maggie seemed to retreat into herself as she talked. Her jaw must be aching. Alex made a fist and thumped it against her own thigh: she should make Maggie stop talking. She should tighten the bandage up and make her rest her jaw. But she felt as though her diaphragm were expanding, pushing down on her gut and up under her lungs at the same time, swelling around a tangled ball of emotions that somehow included fear and rage and grief and remorse and love without being any of those things. It displaced her rational thought, or at least outweighed it. All she could think about, all she could desire, was for Maggie to keep talking, to give some kind of weight or meaning to the absurdity of everything that had happened between them since that first sad, ill-fated kiss in front of the clinic, their mouths tasting of chocolate.

Her face was wet.

“I know you don’t really forgive me,” Maggie said quietly. “I respect that. I know we can’t get back what we lost. But I just… I need you to know it was real. We were real.”

Alex swallowed hard, ran her wrist under her nose and nodded. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

Maggie smiled a small, crooked, gratified smile.

They sat, together, in the silence. After a minute, and then another, and then another, Maggie’s eyes drifted closed again, but her breath never evened out into the rhythm of sleep. Alex leaned back against the wall, tipping her head to rest against the cold metal, and listened for a long time. She didn’t notice her own breathing falling into sync with Maggie’s, but her body felt warm, not as if from the sun, but as if from a blanket and another body. As though their bodies were fitting together like they had always imagined, in sleep, and then in early wakefulness. Intimate.

The hard, tangled knot of emotions began to soften and unravel beneath her ribs.

Alex knew she should go and tighten up Maggie’s bandage again.

“There are other ways to mess up a family, you know,” Alex said quietly, instead.

Maggie’s eyes opened, but she said nothing, the careful set of her jaw and eyes indicating a resignation to whatever she was about to hear.

“You mess up a family by assuming the worst of them,” Alex said.

“Oh, Alex, I never assumed the worst--”

“But I did,” Alex interrupted, and Maggie fell silent again, eyes wide, listening.

Alex inhaled deeply. “You said some horrible things. You know you did.”

Maggie nodded slightly.

“And I assumed the worst of you,” Alex said. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t give you the chance to explain. I think--I think I always assumed that when you had to choose between me and that green patch on your shirt, you’d choose the green patch, because it would make your life so much harder if you chose me. So I heard what you said and I thought I was stupid for thinking it had ever been a decision--like I could ever have mattered to you as much as your Clan did.”

Maggie’s eyes were wet again. “You were everything to me. You--you still are.”

“And I didn’t give you the chance to tell me that,” Alex said. She pushed away from the wall and turned to kneel, face tilted down toward Maggie’s. Gently, she ran a finger down the side of Maggie’s face, from the eye whose white had mostly cleared of blood, over the swollen point of her cheek and down the bruised curve of her jaw, along the edge of her bandaging. Maggie turned her head into Alex’s touch, her eyes fluttering closed as though in relief.

“We can’t get back what we lost,” Alex said softly. Maggie nodded tightly in sad agreement, as best she could.

“But, but maybe--” Alex said, running a soft, gentle thumb over Maggie’s scabbed lower lip, “Maybe we can have something new.”

Maggie’s breath shuddered as though this were rapture, or torture. She opened her eyes. “I would give anything,” she breathed, open and vulnerable in her longing.

Alex smiled. The urge to bend down, to press her chapped lips to Maggie’s, was almost overwhelming. But she knew this wasn’t the time. She settled, instead, carefully tightening Maggie’s bandage back up again and then laying a gentle kiss on her forehead. Maggie’s body shuddered and when Alex pulled back she saw that had given up all pretense and was sobbing quietly, her shoulders shaking with it.

“Alex,” she croaked. It was the only word she could get out and she said it over and over, like a prayer. “Alex. Alex.”

“Shh, I’m here,” Alex murmured. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.” Gently, she wiped the tears from Maggie’s cheeks and then shifted around so she could sit cross-legged with her back against the wall, Maggie’s head settled into her lap. Maggie strained with her eyes to look up, to keep Alex’s face in view, until Alex laid a hand over them, coaxing her lids to close.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured, slipping her fingers around to comb through Maggie’s hair. “That’s all I want you to give me right now.”

Maggie nuzzled the unbroken side of her jaw into Alex’s calf, as though checking to confirm that it was solid against her cheek. A few minutes passed, and with Alex’s fingers stroking at her scalp behind her ear, her body went slack in sleep.

Alex settled back against the wall and waited for news.

\--

That news came with a jolt, when the door crashed open unexpectedly

“Sorry! Sorry!” Kara said, hands held up by her shoulders. “God, let me use my powers for three days and suddenly I can’t control them at all anymore. Come on. I need to get you guys downstairs.”

Maggie had jumped awake with the noise but, to Alex’s relief, didn’t seem to have been pushed into pain.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked, leaning down to help Maggie, who was awkwardly trying to sit up.

Kara smiled. “They got your book, Maggie. J’onn and Lena brought it back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops! Some of you got a sneak peak at the first 1.5 paragraphs of chapter 22. Totally a copy/paste error on my part. Apparently in trying to avoid the formatting and typo errors that made it through my proof reads on the last two chapters, I missed a much larger mistake somehow. Ugh. I'm sorry. 
> 
> I have taken those paragraphs down. They'll be up again in the new chapter when I post it. Nothing much happens in them anyway. :)


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> J’onn looked at Maggie, wide-eyed. “That was some remarkable deduction,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somebody asked me in a comment if "Mike" in this fic was supposed to be Mon-El and I never answered them, and now looking back, I can't find the comment again. The answer is: sort of but not really. I named him after the, uh, canon Mike, yes, but I didn't take any real character inspiration for him. 
> 
> This chapter will seem awfully short compared to the last one, but it's similar in length to a lot of other chapters in the fic. I was a bit hamstrung by the fact that the next chapter is an unsplittable 3000+ words, so combining them would have made another monster chapter and that's not really the rhythm I'm going for here. :)

In the clinic, some mats had been pushed aside from the center of the floor and J'onn was kneeling there, brow furrowed, poring over the book. James, the only other person in the room who could read at all, knelt beside him, eyes narrowed in concentration.

Alex held the door open for Kara, who carried Maggie into the room. Winn, M'gann, and Lena all stepped aside to make space for them. Kara set Maggie carefully on the nearest mat, a few pillows hastily piled up to support her, and then knelt down to one side of the book. Alex knelt down on the other side.

"I guess I'll take the watch, since these two can't fight," M'gann said, gesturing vaguely at Winn and Lena. She grabbed her staff from where it leaned by the door. "Let me know when you figure this out."

When Alex saw the book, she immediately understood why Maggie hadn't even bothered trying to explain it. Its pages were large—as long, top to bottom, as the distance from Alex's elbow to her fingertip—but the book itself was thin, the stack of its pages only about as tall as Alex's thumbnail. And there were almost no words on the pages, and the ones that were there weren’t generally in rows like Alex was used to. Instead, there were colorful images, shapes and lines fitting together and overlapping one another, with words scattered across them at locations that seemed almost totally random. And the words themselves were also in a language Alex didn't understand.

"What is this?" Alex asked.

Wordlessly, J'onn flipped the book closed and rotated it so Alex could see its cover. It said: _Rand McNally Road Atlas of the United States._

She didn’t know what that meant.

She glanced toward Kara and Maggie. Maggie was bright-eyed and excited; Alex imagined she'd have clapped her hands together in glee if they hadn't been bandaged. Kara looked far less confused than Alex herself felt, but her eyebrows were gathered in concentration nonetheless.

“You two know how to read it, right? Because you’re from Land?” Maggie asked.

Kara nodded uncertainly. J’onn was stronger in his affirmation. But Alex, trying not to get exasperated, said, “I don’t. Can one of you help me?”

“Care to do the honors, Maggie?” J’onn asked.

Maggie grinned as best she could and sat up a little straighter. “It’s a book of pictures that show where everything is.”

“I know where everything is,” Alex huffed, “and those pictures don’t tell me anything about the Bridge.”

“Not the Bridge,” Maggie said. “ _Everything_. All the places in… the whole world, maybe.”

Alex blinked. What was ‘the whole world’? She knew, of course, about the planet, about how it orbited the sun and revolved upon its axis. But the idea of _places_ , beyond Leeside, Windside, and the Bridge, was jarring. She knew, of course, that the world was larger than those three regions. But she had never really had reason to think about any other places. They were too far away from her.

“I don’t understand,” Alex said.

Maggie leaned toward her, until the pull tugged a little too far and she winced. A hand skipped off her knee and stretched out toward Alex, and then pulled itself back before touching. “You know the words on the Armistice roof,” she began.

Alex nodded.

“I never knew what they meant. ‘Alton.’ ‘Springfield.’ ‘Hartford.’ ‘Saint Louis.’ Lots of numbers with the letters ‘mi’ beside them: 6 mi. 14 mi. But then I was looking through this book for Luthor and I saw one of them - ‘Alton.’ It took me a second to realize it was the same word from the roof, because, you know, it’s all big letters on the roof but it’s a mix of big and small letters in the book. And then I noticed there was a “St. Louis” on the roof and a “Saint Louis” in the book and I thought, those are pretty similar. And I started to notice that all the words on the roof are in the same section of the book, on page 53.”

J’onn turned to page 53.

“I was trying to figure out why all the words from the roof were in the same section of the book and it just--it clicked,” she said, “really suddenly, all at once. See that blue line?” She reached a bandaged hand across and carefully indicated with its furthest point. “That’s the River. I guess “Mississippi” means “river,” in that language. And all around here are the places on the signs. And then I remembered that J’onn talked about how, a long time ago, the Bridge was a way for people to travel from one place to another place, across the water, and I thought, maybe this was from then. And that’s how it made sense. The metal things would hang up high to tell people on the bridge how far they had to go to get to different places. So I looked for all those places, and looked in the middle of them, and--” she pointed to a place where a yellow line cut across the blue line of the River, ”--there! That’s us! That’s where we are!”

J’onn looked at Maggie, wide-eyed. “That was some remarkable deduction,” he said.

“So I was right?” Maggie asked.

J’onn nodded, and Maggie beamed.

Alex squinted at the picture, still struggling to decipher it.

“Imagine you were way up high,” Kara said quietly to her. “Like, as high as a hundred towers on top of each other, looking down. The River would look like this line. And Leeside would be here,” she pointed, “and Windside would be here, and this spot would be the Bridge. I guess the… Clark Bridge, is what it used to be called.”

The shapes shifted and realigned in front of her eyes until, suddenly, they congealed, and she could see what Kara, J’onn, and Maggie were seeing.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathed, in quiet wonder. “Are all these places still out there, somewhere, then?”

J’onn shook his head. “This is a very, very old book. There might be some neighborhoods or areas with the same names, but most of them have changed. When this book was written, the whole area was still one nation. It hadn’t been split into Leeside and Windside yet, let alone the other places, like the North Country and Desertlands.”

Alex’s head spun. She’d never heard anyone speak so casually, so off-hand, about anywhere besides Leeside, Windside, and the Bridge itself.

“It’s really, really old,” Kara confirmed.

Alex swallowed. “Okay. So--how is this helpful if it shows places that aren’t here anymore?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” J’onn said, but Maggie only grinned.

“Look at this picture,” Maggie rasped, pointing again. “Look at the River, and follow it up just a short ways toward the top of the page.”

“Okay,” Alex said.

“It _splits_ ,” Maggie insisted, like the meaning of that should be obvious. But it wasn’t obvious to Alex. Nor, apparently, to J’onn or Kara.

“It splits, so there’s _land in the middle of it,_ ” Maggie said.

Alex could only blink at her. J’onn remained still, waiting.

“If Leeside is on this side, and Windside is on the other side,” she said, pointing to each side in turn in the book, “Then this space, in the middle of the River, isn’t Leeside or Windside, right? It’s just… open! Free! And it’s not far, right? If we could just… get there, we could have that land to ourselves. Live there, off the Bridge, and not on Leeside or Windside. We could have our own place.”

Alex felt her heart rate climb. It was true. Maggie was right. Brilliant, beautiful Maggie had figured out a solution to their problem. A grin tugged at the corner of her lips, threatened to split her face perfectly. Maggie’s smile pushed deep into her dimples and her eyes.

But J’onn and Kara were casting sidelong glances at one another. Kara bit her lip. J’onn frowned, and set a gentle hand on top of Maggie’s, where it rested on her knee.

“I’m afraid that’s not free land,” he said quietly.

Maggie’s grin cracked. “What?”

“This is a book of maps,” J’onn explained gently. “Maps are used to help people navigate from one place to another, you’re right. And this is a very old one. But that area you pointed to--that’s all part of Leeside. The border follows the left fork of the river. That’s all.”

Maggie’s face fell slowly, the smile slipping down like ice melting into slush off the cables. “Okay,” she said, a frantic edge to her voice. “But it also shows--it also says there are other bridges. Do you see them? Could we go to one of those, maybe? Have our own Bridge somewhere?”

J’onn smiled sadly, his eyes soft. “They’ve all been destroyed in the war,” he said.

Maggie’s breath began to come faster, more harshly.

“It’s okay,” Kara said gently, and Alex wondered if she could hear Maggie’s heart racing as much as it looked like it must be.

“No,” Maggie breathed, shaking her head in disbelief, the gesture small in the confines of her bandaging and her pain but somehow emphatic nonetheless. “No, I--it can’t be, after all this, I--” she held up her hands in front of her, wrapped in dingy bandaging and bracing, and stared at them like they were foreign things. “After everything they did, it can’t--”

“It’s okay,” Alex said quietly, putting a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, but Maggie jerked away from it and then cried out in the pain that it caused.

“Maggie,” Lena said, when she heard the commotion and came over and fell to her knees beside Maggie. But Maggie batted her away, too.

It was James, in the end, whose arms she accepted. James, who shuffled over on his knees and tugged Maggie into his chest, murmuring _it’s okay, we’re okay, you’re okay,_ when Maggie said, “It was all for nothing. We did all of this for nothing.” James, in whose arms Maggie began to sob.

Outside, the sky was turning dark. When Maggie’s sobbing subsided, Alex stood up and went to the corner, firing up the stove and beginning to prepare rations. Winn followed her to help.

“Whew,” he huffed. “This has been a day, hasn’t it.”

Maggie blinked forlornly at the food that Alex set beside her. It was, as Maggie’s meals always were these days, heavily cooked and then pureed, so that she could drink it through a straw.

“Don’t give me that look. You’re eating,” Alex said drily, but with a careful, affectionate smile.

Maggie smiled a little at Alex’s softness, almost despite herself. She held up her bandaged right hand and scowled at it.

“Unwrap this.”

Alex frowned. “Lena changed the dressing this morning. Is it uncomfortable?”

“It’s fine,” she spat, as best she could. “Take it off.”

“Maggie--”

“I’m tired of not being able to do a damn thing for myself. You guys have to carry me, wipe my ass, hold my food while I _drink_ it, I’m sick of it. Unwrap the bandages and keep the splints on and I can hold the cup myself.”

“Absolutely not,” Lena called from the other side of the room. “Do you want to regain use of that hand or not?”

Maggie was still leaning against James. Alex looked up at him and he shrugged.

“Give it one more day and we’ll try it,” Alex offered in compromise.

Maggie sniffed harshly, her eyes still red from crying. “Tomorrow. No excuses.”

“Tomorrow,” Alex agreed, and then held the straw to her lips.

They were halfway through their meal when M’gann poked her head through the door.

“Someone here for you all,” she said. “Thought you’d want to see him too, after today.”

Alex furrowed her brow in confusion. In the corner of her eye, she saw J’onn do the same. But beyond J’onn, Kara just sighed, and said, “Yeah. Let him in.”

So M’gann opened the door and stepped aside to let Jeremiah into the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to @twineetwin in the last chapter who guessed in the comments that the book would be an atlas. Nicely done. :)
> 
> I didn't track down a real copy of Rand McNally to write this, so please don't go looking for page 53 and hoping to see what's described here. I don't even know if page 53 of any US road atlas would show this part of the country. I made it up.
> 
> The bridge is real, though, as is the river geography described. I took some liberties with the bridge itself, in that my fictional bridge has two decks but the Clark Bridge only has one. Also, I think my fictional bridge probably sits higher above the water than this one does.
> 
> I also only just now, while writing this note, realized the irony of my having chosen the Clark Bridge (months ago!) as the setting for a Supergirl fic. #accidentalsupermancameo


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are you doing here, Dad?”

The group went silent, looking at Jeremiah in the doorway. His eyes slid over the room, not its people but its contents, and he sighed. Eventually, his gaze tripped over Kara, and J’onn, and finally onto Alex.

“You’re still using that same old microscope, after all these years,” he said to her.

Alex shrugged. “I worked with what I had to work with.”

“I remember you,” Winn piped up suddenly. “My mom took me to you once when I was really little and the doctor’s son punched me.”

Jeremiah turned and squinted at him. “I remember you. Current boy, right? Your nose heal up okay?”

“Like new,” Winn said, smiling nervously.

Jeremiah smiled back. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

They all sat quietly, eyes flitting to one another and occasionally up to Jeremiah, until J’onn cleared his throat and let his fork clink against his bowl as he began to eat again.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said, suddenly looking nervous. “I’ve--I’ve interrupted your dinner.”

Alex sighed. “It’s fine, Dad. Sit down. You hungry?” She hoped he wasn’t. They didn’t have extra food or leftovers. 

He smiled and waved his hand in gentle dismissal as he settled onto a mat near her. “No, no. You go ahead and eat, though.”

But Alex hadn’t started eating yet; her bowl was set beside her, rapidly cooling, as she nudged the straw back toward the lips of Maggie’s scowling face as it eyed Jeremiah warily. 

“You… look like you’ve seen better days,” Jeremiah said nervously to Maggie.

“Dad,” Alex said, with a shake of her head. “Don’t. Unless you think you can help her better than we did.”

Jeremiah shook his head and shrugged. “I haven’t been a doctor since I left here. I’ve forgotten a lot. But it looks like you did good work.”

“Maggie,” Alex said quietly, holding the straw. “Please.”

“I want to know what he’s doing here,” she said, indignantly.

Alex could understand the indignation. Her father had stood there, proudly, while the man beside him had proclaimed that the unwell and the disabled would be given lower priority for admission to the mainland, especially if they had no contacts to welcome them.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, and then turned to her father. “What are you doing here, Dad?”

He inhaled sharply, his breath shaking a little in his chest, and passed a hand over his greying hair.

“You’re alive,” he said quietly, throatily. “All these years, it never occurred to me that you could have survived. You were so sick when I left.”

“You knew Kara survived,” she snapped. “You knew J’onn survived. I wasn’t the only person counting on you when you left.”

“Alex.” It was Kara, her voice soft, laying a soothing hand on Alex’s shoulder, and it made Alex want to lash out with irrational violence. 

“Take the damn straw, Maggie,” Alex barked.

“I’m not a  _ child _ , Alex, you can’t force me to--”

_ “Hey _ ,” James interrupted. “Alex: don’t take it out on Maggie. Maggie: we can set your supper aside and I’ll help you come back to it when you’re ready.” He held out a hand toward Alex, who sighed and placed the cup in it, and then turned to face her father. Kara had walked over and sat down beside her, resting a hand on her lower back.

Alex set her teeth. “Why are you here, Dad?”

“Because you are,” Jeremiah said. “Because I want you to come home with me.”

“All of us?” Alex asked, her eyes flitting over to J’onn.

Jeremiah sighed. “I can bring you and Kara, as long as she--" he looked over at her, " _you_ stop using your powers and pretend to be a... typical human. The rest is beyond my control.”

And Alex barked a laugh in his face. “You waltz back in here after a  _ decade _ and think we’re going to walk away from the people who have made our lives worth living the whole time you were gone?”

(“Alex--”)

“You want to just throw  _ J’onn _ out like garbage after everything he’s done for us?”

“ _ Alex.” _

Alex’s eyes shot over to Maggie, who rested against James’ chest. She was stroking absently at her jaw and Alex cursed herself: she shouldn’t have allowed her, let alone encouraged her, to talk so much today.

But: “He’s your family,” Maggie said quietly, eyes soft and sad. “Isn’t he?”

_You ruin a family by assuming the worst of each other_ , Alex thought.

“You never came back,” she said, looking down. “You’ve been alive all this time, all these years, and you never came back for the people who needed you. Where have you been for the past ten years?”

Jeremiah inhaled deeply. “It's a long story."

Alex looked at J'onn, who shrugged.

"We've got time," he said.

Jeremiah looked at J'onn and smiled tightly, sadly, again, and then looked back to Alex and Kara.

"You know I went to Leeside with a team from Current,” he said.

Alex nodded.

“We travelled down the river on these little rafts to this place where the barrier wall stopped and turned into a fence. There was a hole in the fence, and we went through it. The man who was the team leader--he took us to this meeting point at this hut in the woods. He said he’d met there with Leeside traders a thousand times. But we were raided. The whole team got arrested. I found out later that the Current leader had sold us out in exchange for a new identity and freedom to live in Leeside.”

Winn gasped.

J’onn grunted softly in some combination of frustration and incredulity, and Jeremiah’s eyes flashed over to him.

“I spent five years in a cell,” he said. “Getting interrogated. They’d yell at me in the Leeside language and I couldn’t understand them, and then they’d rough me up to try to get me to talk.” He stroked absently at the scarring on his cheek as he spoke. “I don’t know how long it took them to finally get a translator in. I told her I’d come to try to trade for antivirals, but that all I wanted then was to get home to my daughters on the Bridge.”

The plural, “daughters,” slipped naturally from his lips, enough that Alex didn’t think he’d forced it to make some kind of a point. Beside her, Kara shifted a little.

“They didn’t believe me,” Jeremiah continued. “They thought I was a spy, trying to convince them to put me on the Bridge to effectively give me amnesty. 

“The trading team--they must have had some kind of information to share, something they could give. Most of them had been to Windside pretty recently so they had something to bargain with. One by one, they took them out of the cells and they never came back. I guess they freed them, or something. I don’t know."

"They never came back," Winn said. "None of them."

Jeremiah looked sadly at him and shrugged apologetically. "Maybe they're still in Leeside. Or maybe they're in prison somewhere, or dead. I don't know. All I know is that I didn’t have anything to tell the Leesiders. They didn’t know what to do with me. So I just sat there for so long I didn’t know how long it was. I found out later it was probably about three years.”

“You said you were imprisoned for five years,” J’onn said, his arms crossed over his chest.

Jeremiah looked at him and nodded. “This woman. A journalist.” He looked at Alex again. “A journalist is someone who writes about things happening in the world and then shares their writing with other people, to help keep them informed,” he explained. 

Alex nodded. She’d seen the word in a book or two.

“She found out about me. Her cousin was the brother-in-law of one of the guards. Somehow she heard there was this Bridge-person wasting away in a prison with no charges and no opportunities for release. She came to talk to me once, and then came again, and after awhile she was visiting me once, maybe twice a week. I told her my story.  _ Our _ story," Jeremiah said earnestly to Alex and Kara. "And she wrote it, and she published it. She took my photo and everything. And she must have written it really well, because people got angry. There was a whole movement that happened there, around me. It took two more years, but at the end of it, there was enough outcry that I was released.”

J’onn made an indecipherable sound, somewhere between surprise and frustration. Alex shifted closer to him, aligning her body with his, shoulder to shoulder. J’onn glanced over and offered her a tight, thankful smile.

She was with him. After all they’d achieved together, all they’d survived, she couldn’t imagine anything that could turn her from her allegiance to him.

“That was five years ago,” Alex said.

Jeremiah sighed and dropped his head. When he looked up again, his eyes were wet. “I thought you were dead,” he said. “I didn’t think you could possibly have survived. When I was released, I was released with no help, no transportation, wearing the same clothes I’d been arrested in five years earlier. It was the journalist, Katherine, who picked me up. She took me home, gave me a place to stay, helped me get clothes. She said I could stay there as long as I wanted, or she could take me somewhere I wanted to go.”

He looked up at Alex again. “You were dead, I thought. And your mother was dead. And it had been five years, so I thought J’onn and Kara must have found their way on their own by that time. They always had such a kinship anyway, both of them being from the Land.” His eyes flitted to each of them in turn. Kara looked down and away. J’onn set his shoulders again and said nothing.

“I had become sort of famous in Leeside. I had become this symbol of what the war with Windside was doing to innocent people. Katherine had become involved with this movement, the first big movement in a generation to try to end the war, she said. She said it was knowing me that inspired her to do it. So I asked her how I could help. And I became… I don’t know. A public figure. I gave speeches. I met with political leaders. I even travelled to Windside once as part of a diplomatic group, and then again for...yesterday. And it… it had an impact, Alex. I was an important part of ending this war. I don’t mean to sound self-important.” He shrugged awkwardly. “It’s just true.”

“Your ‘peace treaty’ will send J’onn to prison for the rest of his life, or worse,” Alex spat. 

Jeremiah sagged. “I know. I pushed against that. But I was the only one.” He looked at J’onn and said, with apparent sincerity, “I’m sorry, friend. I tried. I swear to you on my own life that I tried.”

J’onn swallowed and looked away.

Jeremiah looked at Alex again, and then at Kara. “I want you to come to Leeside with me,” he said, to both of them.

Alex opened her mouth to speak, but before she could make a sound, Kara said, “You don’t know what we’ve been through with these peope. I’d rather cut off my own foot than leave them. And I don’t think anyone could cut off my foot.”

James shifted closer to her and slipped an arm around her waist, and Kara settled unapologetically into it. Jeremiah’s eyes flitted from her face to James' and back again, and he nodded in understanding.

“You’re going to have to find a way to leave the Bridge,” he said, resignedly. “They weren’t joking. They’re going to clear it out and take it down. I don’t know what they’ll do to resisters.”

“I can protect us,” Kara said. “They can’t do anything to me.”

“That’s not true, Kara. That’s the other reason I came: you’re in danger here.”

Kara scoffed.

“Don’t laugh. I mean it,” Jeremiah insisted. “A company developed this stuff called kryptonite that could defeat supersoldiers. It was so effective that the supersoldier programs were eliminated on both sides. And I heard just this afternoon from one of my sources that someone from one of the Clans was trying to get ahold of some.”

Lena tipped her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’ll be my mother. God, she’ll stop at  _ nothing.” _

Jeremiah looked at her intently for the first time. “Wow,” he said, suddenly, “little Lena Luthor, all grown up.”

Lena glared at him.

“It’s not Armistice. It’s Redsun.” 

Everyone except J’onn looked surprised.

“Kara is the most powerful thing on this Bridge,” J’onn said, “until someone acquires the power to defeat her.”

“What does it look like? How do we stop it?” Alex asked urgently.

“It’s green, and it glows,” Jeremiah said, “and you don’t stop it. You can’t.”

“There has to be a way,” Alex said.

But Jeremiah just shook his head. “It won’t hurt anyone else. But for Kara,” he looked at her intently, “you dodge it. And if it hits you and misses your vital organs, you clean out the wound as quickly as you can and you get yourself into the sunlight. The sunlight will heal you. Okay?”

Kara, chastened, eyes wide in fear, nodded.

Alex shifted her hand from Kara’s back to her forearm and squeezed it tightly. Then she looked at her father again. “We all need to get off this Bridge, and we need to do it together. I won’t go with you to Leeside. Can you help us get off here some other way?” 

Jeremiah sighed and looked down, running his fingers through his hair. Then he looked at J’onn.

“The north country opened their border about a year and a half ago. They’re taking refugees. Maybe there?”

“North country?” Winn asked quietly from near the door.

“The nation to the north of us,” J’onn said. “Thousands of miles upRiver. They weren’t part of the war.”

“Done,” Kara said, “I’ll fly us.”

“ _ No _ ,” Jeremiah insisted. “It’s far too dangerous for you to fly, especially this many trips,” he gestured vaguely to the people in the room, “for that distance. People on both sides are terrified of the supersoldiers they created. They’d shoot you with kryptonite and not think twice about it. No: you’d have to travel along the water. At night. It would take you… thirty days, forty, maybe more. A lot of them. Depending on the weather.”

“We’d need supplies,” M’gann said. Alex looked up. She was leaning in the doorway, eyes facing outward, ear tipped in to listen.

“We can barely keep ourselves fed here,” M’gann finished. “And we’d need some kind of a boat to travel up the water.”

Jeremiah nodded. “I can probably help with that. Katherine’s networks… they’ll want to help. But they’d need drop points. Places where they can put things where you’ll know to look for them. If we could figure that out, and you could find a way to get to the first one, I could probably have an inflatable boat for you there, too. But I don’t know how we could arrange it when none of you know the geography of the river past the next bend.”

J’onn shook his head and, bizarrely, laughed. How could he laugh, Alex thought? Their situation was more desperate than they could have imagined, if Kara was in such imminent danger. 

Then he reached for Maggie’s book and flipped it open to page 53, with the image of their section of the River. He held it out to Jeremiah. “Would this help?”

 

\--

 

Later that night, Alex looked at Maggie’s book. Jeremiah and J’onn had pored over it together, making marks on the pages with a plastic stick that Jeremiah had taken from his pocket.

Jeremiah had learned not only to read, but to write a little, in his time in Leeside. 

“I can’t read as well as you can, probably,” he’d said to Alex with a smile, “but enough to get by.”

The place names were different, sometimes, but the river was the same, and many of the new cities were in the same places as the old ones. So Jeremiah marked the areas where he knew they had contacts, and told them to look on the Leeside bank of the river in those areas.

“The supplies will be hidden,” he said. “Alex, do you still have that plant book?”

Alex nodded. It was upstairs, in her room, but she had it.

Jeremiah smiled. “Look for the flower that’s out of place, at every place. That’s how I’ll have them mark the packs.”

Wordlessly, Alex nodded again. 

“You’re sure you’ll remember these places when you leave here?” J’onn asked warily.

Jeremiah shrugged and nodded, lips quirked into a half-smile. “When you don’t read and write, you survive on your memory,” he said. “I’ll remember.”

They stood up together, J’onn tucking the book under his arm, and Jeremiah looking less lost than he’d looked when he first arrived.

“Jeremiah,” J’onn said. 

Jeremiah met his eyes.

“Your people on the land -- they know the Clans are at war, right?”

Jeremiah inhaled deeply and let it out through his nose. “They have an idea of it, yes.”

“They know the Clans won’t magically cease to exist when they leave the Bridge,” J’onn pressed. “This war will follow them to the Land. And their hatred of the Unaligned--at least those of us from the Bridge--will follow them, too.”

Jeremiah shrugged hopelessly and nodded. “The people on Land don’t really understand how Clans work. I’m doing what I can to educate them. And if they don’t listen, they’ll find out the hard way.”

He looked at J’onn again, meeting his gaze steadily. “It’s far from a perfect peace that’s been struck,” he said, “and far from a perfect plan to empty the Bridge. I’m doing what I can to make it better than it would be if I weren’t at the table, but there will be problems. Everyone knows it. I just know it better than most.”

Before Jeremiah left, he tore a small bit of paper off the corner of one of the pages of the book, and wrote some numbers on it. He handed it to Alex.

“When you get there,” he said, “you can use that number to call me on the phone. J'onn can help you. I’ll come and visit you. I’ll bring Katherine.”

“She’s important to you,” Alex said.

Jeremiah looked down, almost shyly, and nodded. “I never thought I could love again, after your mother,” he said, “and nobody will ever replace her. I love Katherine differently. But just as much, I think.”

Alex smiled. “Good. I’m happy for you, Dad. I don’t want you to be lonely.”

Kara had hugged Jeremiah goodbye, and J’onn had accepted a firm handshake. Jeremiah looked at Alex, now, standing together by the door.

“I’ll need two days for the first drop,” he said. “I just need you to stay here and be safe for two more days.”

“I think we can manage that,” Alex said, with a smile. 

Jeremiah smiled and nodded. Then he shuffled, awkwardly, from one foot to the other.

“Can I hug you?” he asked, finally.

Alex smiled. She had been  _ so angry  _ with him when she had seen him, at first. But now: she didn’t mind the idea.

“Okay,” she said, opening her arms.

The feel of him holding her, the smell of him, made her feel like a child again: warm, and protected, and safe.

“We’ll see each other again,” Jeremiah said when they pulled away, somewhere between a question and a statement.

Alex smiled, and nodded. “Yeah. We will.”

"Mr. Danvers!" a voice called from deeper in the room. 

Alex looked. Winn.  


"It was my father," he said.

Jeremiah looked at him, puzzled.

"My dad was the leader on that Current expedition," he said. "My father sold you out. And I'm... I'm sorry. For him. For doing that. Kara and Alex and J'onn have been so nice to me for such a long time, now, even--even though I was in Current and--" He looked distraught, his eyes wide and red. "I'm just... I'm sorry. For him." He looked over at Alex, who was watching him from the door, and Kara, who stood near her. "I'm sorry," he said to them.

Jeremiah picked his way across the mats on the floor to where Winn was hovering awkwardly near the stove.

"Son," he said, "you are not responsible for your father's mistakes." He inhaled sharply, as though the weight of those words were settling on him, in the context of his speaking, right then. "You have nothing to apologize for. And I'm proud to hear that my friend and my daughters were kind to you."

Winn smiled awkwardly and examined his shoes.  
  
"Winn," Alex said. He looked up at her, frightened.

"We're okay," she said. 

Kara nodded too. "It's not your fault."  
  
His smile looked relieved, now, as he turned to keep washing dishes.

Jeremiah squeezed Kara's shoulder, and then Alex's, before he left, closing the door carefully behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL, guys, Katherine is a random OC who doesn't really matter. I'm an idiot who didn't think of the Cat Grant connection. Sorry!


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You need to stop talking like you matter less than the rest of us, Maggie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here begins, in earnest, the terrifying process of trying to bring this thing in for a landing. Note the chapter count, which has been updated to reflect the number of chapters I'm expecting to take to break up the remaining content, including the epilogue. We're getting there!
> 
> I think some of you guys missed Maggie in the last chapter, so I hope you like this one a little better.

After Jeremiah left, everyone gathered into a loose circle near Maggie, who was still propped up on pillows whose eyes were wide open. James held the watch, standing in the open doorway. J’onn was looking at the map, Kara hovering and looking at it over his shoulder.

“I mean, I can understand why he doesn’t want me to fly us all the way to this… north country… if there are weapons that can kill me. But I can just fly us to this first drop point, can’t I? It’s not _that_ far.”

“I don’t like that risk,” J’onn said. “There are people on both sides of the Land who know you’re here. Security is already vigilant near the River, and if they’re really that terrified of supersoldiers like you, they’ll be watching even more closely now.” He shook his head, passing a hand over his hair. “We need something that floats that’s big enough to carry all of us.”

Alex looked around the room, racking her brain. One of the sheets of metal that made up the long wall of the clinic would probably float, and it would probably support one or two people without sinking, but not all eight of them. If they dismantled the whole clinic, they might be able to get enough surface, but it would be unwieldy and completely unconcealed.

Her home, well sealed up with the door turned up toward the sky, might float -- but how would they get it down from the top of the tower?

Out of nowhere, Winn piped up. “I have--I don’t know. It might be a crazy idea?”

Alex turned a surprised face toward him. Everyone in the room did the same, except Maggie, who tilted her eyes as best she could in his direction. She was in pain, Alex could tell, strained after all the exhausting events of the day.

“Any idea’s a good one,” J’onn encouraged. “What are you thinking?”

Winn shrugged. “The power turbine floats. It’s kept underwater with this big pulley system but it’s designed to float so that we can access it to do maintenance and stuff no matter how high the river is. And it’s big enough that we could probably all sit on top of it.”

J’onn’s eyebrows raised, impressed. “That’s not a crazy idea at all. What makes it crazy?”

“Well, it’s guarded around the clock at the best of times, for one thing, and I’m sure it’s double-guarded now,” he said. “Floating it is easy -- you turn a crank that loosens the rig and it rises. But then we’d have to find a way to get it out of that rig altogether.  It’s some pretty heavy-duty chains.”

J’onn laughed a little and looked at Kara, who grinned. “I can handle that part,” she said.

“Well, and then, we’d have to--” he swallowed and glanced at Maggie ruefully, “we’d have to work something out for Maggie to be able to stay on. It’s a cylinder, so most of us can just sort of, you know, straddle it. But Maggie will need some help to stay in place, though--”

“Don’t let that stop you,” Maggie interrupted in a tight, thin tone that reflected the pain in her jaw. “Don’t let me be the thing that holds everyone else back from--”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Lena interrupted firmly.

“Neither am I,” Alex said, surprised at the angry tone of her own voice, “and let’s spare ourselves the song and dance of going around the room and all of us announcing it individually. You need to stop talking like you matter less than the rest of us, Maggie. Even when J’onn and Kara and I thought you’d betrayed us, we weren’t going to let you die brutally at the hands of your Clan. We’re not going to just _leave_ you here. So just kill that whole line of thinking and anything like it that comes up in the future, okay?”

James chuckled. “Yeah, what she said.”

“Yep,” Kara agreed.

J’onn just smirked like he found the whole situation a little bit funny.

Maggie stared at her, wide-eyed, and then the corner of her lip quirked upward, just a little. “Yes ma’am,” she said.

Winn cleared his throat. “And, I mean. Um. I was just going to say, ‘though a couple of us could probably just, you know, hold her in place if it came down to it.’” He looked pointedly at Maggie and grinned. “Jumped the gun, there, didn’t you?”

J’onn rolled his eyes and _laughed_.

Alex couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him laugh like that: full-bellied, full-throated, deep and rich. It made her feel warm, somehow, and safe, and for the first time in days, full of enough hope to outweigh her fear.

She looked over at Maggie, whose lips were pulled into a little smile, and who was _blushing_. Alex couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen Maggie blush, or look a little shy like she did at right that moment. And something about that smile, despite how limited it was by her injuries, seemed more genuine and real than almost any expression of happiness that Alex had ever seen on Maggie’s face.

At the bottom of the rope, when they were splashing each other with water when they’d dropped together. That, Alex thought, had been the last time she’d seen this unapologetic happiness. Every single moment of happiness since then had been tinged with something else, something Alex had always read as sadness and interpreted to be a reflection of all the things the two of them would never be able to have together. Now, thinking back, Alex was sure some of that was fear, or nervousness, or a level of withdrawal that was a necessary component of all the secrets Maggie had, just earlier today, confessed to keeping.

Maggie’s eyes turned to her, and when they met hers, something in them flared brighter still, and Alex couldn’t help but smile broadly back at her.

It was then, in that clear moment, Maggie's eyes so full of a love that couldn't be anything but real, that Alex realized that her forgiveness of Maggie had become real and full. 

When the moment passed, they began to settle in for the night. It was dark out, and Kara took advantage of the late hour to sneak outside with two water pouches and discreetly fly down to the River surface to fill them up. Lena helped Maggie with a sanitizing rinse of her teeth.

“You’ve strained your jaw today,” Lena chastized, “Kara says you haven't aggravated the fracture too badly, but still, no talking for you for awhile, all right?”

Maggie looked duly reprimanded, but not regretful. “It was worth it,” she said.

Lena smiled and cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m sure _she_ is,” she smiled, “but I want you to be able to eat solid food again. And if you’re very lucky, she’ll want you to be able to do other things with that mouth of yours one day--”

Alex blushed furiously and pretended not to hear from where she stood brushing her teeth.

“--so you need to take care of your jaw. All right?”

Maggie raised a bandaged hand and mock-saluted her, and then Lena busied herself with adjusting her bandages to more firmly stabilize her jaw. The salute was so silly, and so irreverent; Alex was struck by a bone-deep, all-encompassing desire to kiss her, and no desire, none at all, to wait another day. Or even another hour.

She spat and rinsed, and then lay down next to Maggie. James stood watch at the door, and J’onn turned out the light.

Alex shifted closer, over the seam between her mat and Maggie’s.

“Maggie,” she whispered near her ear, in the dark.

Maggie hummed almost silently.

“Maggie, can I kiss you?”

A pause. It stretched.

Finally: “Mm-hmmm.”

So Alex shifted up onto her elbow and carefully, with gentle fingers, felt for the curve of Maggie’s cheek, the point of her chin. A bandaged hand settled against the back of Alex’s shoulder.

Alex tipped her head down and touched her lips to Maggie’s.

It was brief, and chaste, and felt more familiar, more like _home,_ than even her father’s embrace had felt.

“We’re going to be be okay,” she murmured, when she pulled back. She might have been talking about all of them, about their plan to escape the Bridge. She might have been talking about the two of them, together. She wasn’t entirely sure. The only certainty she felt, in that moment, was that everything that had needed to change had changed for them that day, created for them an opening of possibility of the the prison that the Bridge had become -- or, perhaps, had always been.

The bandaged hand pressed more tightly to her shoulder, and then slid up to cradle her jaw. Maggie didn’t speak, _couldn’t_ speak, but Alex could feel her breath in warm puffs against her cheek. Her eyes were clear, and focused, and not frantic and desperate like they’d been upstairs in the room.

Maggie's hand moved and petted at her skin. Even as clumsy as it was forced to be, wrapped up to the point of mummification, it was tender, and intimate. Maggie was trying to offer her comfort in the small movements and gestures she could make.

With a sudden and visceral burn, Alex hated, hated, _hated_ Maggie's injuries, even more than she’d hated them up to this point, because she wanted nothing more than to curl into the cradle of her arms and sleep for the days it would take for her to finally feel rested.

But she couldn't. She couldn't even hold Maggie, really, without aggravating her injuries. So instead she tugged her pillow closer, and slipped under the side of Maggie’s blanket, and wrapped her hands around Maggie's elbow.

They had lain together here, in exactly this spot, and fantasized about the simple pleasure of falling asleep together at night and sleeping through to the morning.

This inadequate approximation was perfect, if only because it was the best they could do.

Alex couldn't remember falling asleep, but when, several hours later, J’onn woke her for her shift at the night watch, she could tell she hadn't moved at all.

 

\--

 

In the morning, they began to strategize how to get everyone down to the turbine. They would have to leave at night. The climb traveled down a narrow ladder in a tight tunnel inside the tower, so Kara would have to fly Maggie down; Winn insisted that the tunnel was too small for anyone to be able to carry her down it, even if they could find a way to somehow manage the ladder.

Everyone else would pack what they could carry that they’d need -- food, blankets, as much medicine as they could carry (Alex insisted), any books they thought might be useful (Kara insisted), a good length of rope (M’gann insisted). Alex and James climbed the tower together to pull down any rope they could find from their old training safety gear, but there wasn’t much, and what they had was weathered and worn.

“I don’t really know what we’d need much rope for anyway,” Alex said, rubbing at the frayed nylon with her thumb. James shrugged.

But back in the clinic, M’gann was insistent. “You never know what you’ll need rope for. We might need to tow something, or be towed. We might need to tie ourselves to each other or to our boat, or tie the boat to the shore. I kept a big coil of it up in my garden, and it saved my tail more times than I can count.”

J’onn laughed. “You may have just volunteered to go back to your place and get it, then. Take someone with you--Alex?”

Alex shrugged at M’gann, smiling, and M’gann nodded.

Hidden under Lena’s cloak, Alex followed M’gann to the railing and, with a deep breath, over it; side by side, they dropped so that they were hanging by their hands from the railing, and then kicked once, twice, three times, and threw themselves to the ground on the Bridge’s lower level. They had targets on their backs everywhere, but Alex had a particularly large one and especially in Armistice, so they crept across the Bridge in the dark, cramped confines of the Bridge Below. When they reached M’gann’s tower, Alex looked up. She could see sky and daylight in the gap between the tower and the Bridge, a gap large enough to fit her body through, but she couldn’t figure out how to get herself up there.

“See?” M’gann said, “rope would be pretty helpful right about now, wouldn’t it?”

She was right, of course.

“Give me a leg up, okay? I’m going to step on your shoulder,” M’gann said.

Dutifully, Alex bent and interlaced her fingers, holding them open for M’gann’s foot. M’gann stabilized herself against the tower wall. They counted down from three and then M’gann jumped as Alex hefted up, and M’gann’s feet hopped quickly from Alex’s hands to her shoulder to the tower wall and then leapt up further, until she hung from a rafter. With a grunt, she dropped one hand and released her staff from the strap that held it to her back, swinging it up and catching one end over the top of the upper deck, and then jimmying the other end until she could dangle from it in the gap, each end resting on the floor above. She kicked her legs up into the rafters and hoisted herself up the rest of the way.

It was perhaps the most remarkable feat of athleticism Alex had ever seen -- including all of Maggie’s many climbs up the water rope.

M’gann leaned down over the gap and held her staff down so that its end was just out of Alex’s reach.

“Give it a run, then push off the wall with your foot and catch the end of this, and we’ll get you up to the rafters and I can pull you over.”

So that’s what they did.

Back on the Bridge Above, across from Alex’s home tower, they collapsed on the ground, breathing hard, until M’gann started laughing. And then Alex started laughing, too.

“Why are we laughing?” Alex gasped. “I don’t even know what’s funny!”

“All of it,” M’gann said, waving her hand dismissively. “Don’t you think this whole mess is kind of ridiculous?”

In that moment, Alex realized, her arms burning from hauling herself up over the deck, her shoulder probably bruised from where M’gann had stepped on it, she agreed: it was all completely, profoundly _funny_.

They caught their breath and then began the long climb up the tower. M’gann had more ladders than Alex’s tower had, and fewer ropes, so it made the climb quick. They hauled themselves over the lip onto the top of the tower. It was covered with row after row of pipes and tubes, all empty now, but Alex imagined what they must have looked like just seven or eight days ago, overflowing with greenery and edibles.

“Doesn’t look like much now,” M’gann said, her voice touched with sadness. “My mother grew things here before me, and her father before her.”

She strode down the aisle to the far end of the tower, where she thumbed the combination into a lock on a wooden crate and then opened the lid to reveal an enormous coil of rope.

“That it?” Alex asked, looking over her shoulder.

M’gann nodded, lifting it out of the crate.

Below it, in the dark bottom of the box, Alex noticed a tangle of nylon straps, and something metallic beneath them. Was that--

She bent down, picked it up, and looked at M’gann. “You have a water drop rig?”

M’gann nodded. “I ran hydroponics up here. No way I could have traded for all the water I needed.” She quirked her lips and shrugged, almost apologetically. “J’onn and I couldn’t carry it when he came to get me, the night of that first fight, because we were loaded down with all the vegetables. I thought I’d come back and get it, but then everything happened with Kara and she’s been able to fly down to get us all the water we need.”

Alex nodded.

For as long as she’d known Maggie, the most gleeful, grand, outward display of euphoria she’d seen had been when they’d dropped together that first time.

How happy would Maggie be, then, if Alex and M’gann brought her this drop gear? It would be some time before she could use it, and maybe they wouldn’t even need to drop for water again once they got off the Bridge -- but she’d have it. She could tie it to a bridge somewhere and drop, just for that thrilling sensation of falling.

The very idea of how Maggie would look when she saw it made Alex’s belly feel warm.

“Do you mind if I bring it?” Alex asked M’gann. “I think it would make Maggie really happy.”

“Knock yourself out, as long as you’re carrying it,” M’gann smiled, adjusting the staff on her back and then hefting the rope over her shoulder.

The gear was older than Maggie’s had been, and heavily stitched and patched, as were most things that belonged to the Unaligned. The steel belay device was tarnished where Maggie’s had shone. But it was a drop harness, nonetheless. Alex took off her cloak, slipped her head and arm through one of the straps, and then tied the cloak overtop of it.

Before they began their climb back down the tower, M’gann paused, taking a moment to look at what was left of her old life: a small home in the corner of the tower, a storage crate, and rows upon rows of empty, stained PVC pipe.

“It wasn’t exactly a good life,” she said, as if to herself, “but it was mine.”

“Will you miss it?” Alex asked quietly.

M’gann laughed drily. “Depends what comes next. I doubt it, though.” She crouched down and swung a leg over to the top rung of the ladder, starting her climb down. “Here’s to new beginnings.”

Alex smiled and blew all the air out of her lungs. New beginnings, indeed.

 

\--

 

Alex and M’gann made it back to their tower without any trouble, but the air on the Bridge was as tense as it had been for the previous days, or maybe moreso.

“Where is everyone?” M’gann whispered.

She was right: for the hours approaching midday, the Bridge was eerily quiet. There were people out, making trips to different counters to see if they could somehow convince anyone to trade across Clan lines for things that they needed, but not many of them. At their drop zones, drop squads were working quickly but almost silently, in strong contrast to the way they usually called out and hooted to one another as they jumped for another load of water. Mechanics and engineers didn’t mutter to one another as they made their way toward their water turbines or solar panels. And nobody was out and about without a purpose.

“It’s eerie,” Alex agreed quietly.

Alex felt eyes on her as she walked. She could tell M’gann did, too, because she pulled her staff out of its harness on her back and began to walk with it in her hand.

At the clinic, Kara was standing watch at the door, her brow furrowed.

“You hear it too,” Alex said, without greeting.

Kara nodded, eyes unfocused in the way that indicated she was listening intently. “I mean, it’s what I _don’t_ hear. People talking, laughing, going about their days. I hear people working and trying to be quiet. And that’s all I hear.” She blinked twice, and then looked at Alex. “J’onn thinks they’re gearing up to start fighting again.”

The tension had that feel to it: armies preparing for battle.

Inside the clinic, J’onn and Winn were organizing rations and supplies into bundles. Lena had unwrapped Maggie’s hands and legs to clean them, leaving maggie in her shirt, undershorts, and splints. James was helping her. The bruises on Maggie’s legs had faded from black to green, but as best Alex could tell, the bones looked straight. The muscles had thinned and softened considerably, but that was to be expected. There would be time, in the future, to rebuild. Maggie was watching Lena and James work as they wiped at her skin, her barely-suppressed scowl evident even with her jaw bandage firmly in place. Then she looked up and saw Alex and her face paled, her wiry hands with their heavy splints coming down to rest on her thighs as if to hide them.

Alex smiled. “Maggie, look what M’gann had.” She shrugged out of her cloak, and held up the well-worn harness.

Maggie couldn’t smile but the weight of her whole body shifted, pulling minutely toward Alex and the harness in her hands. Alex smiled and stepped over to her, carefully avoiding the stacks of rations and water pouches and medicines that Winn was sorting, and crouched down by her head. Maggie slipped her less-injured hand out of Lena’s grasp to touch the leather and the stitches in the nylon, and then she looked up at Alex, wide-eyed.

Alex grinned. “I’m bringing this with us. I don’t care if I have to wear it all the way to the north country: we’re going to have it, and we’re going to find a way for you to use it. I’ll build you a bridge myself if I have to, just so you can tie yourself to a rope and jump off it.”

Maggie glowed.

“So you guys, uh, you worked things out, then?” James asked Alex a few minutes later.

Alex smiled a little. “We're working on it, yeah.”

James broke into a grin could have lit up the room. “That’s… that’s a relief, Alex,” he said. “I’m glad.”

The buzz in the room was hopeful for the first time since they’d all taken up residence there. The next day they’d be leaving: they’d make their way down to the turbine, and with Kara’s help they’d push or propel themselves up the river to the first supply drop point, which shouldn’t take more than half a day. Even Maggie, who was so frustrated with her condition and her dependency on everyone around her, had found reason for happiness. Winn was buzzing with nervous energy, J’onn was _humming_ to himself. Lena looked simultaneously terrified and enthralled by the energy around her. James looked like he’d never need to sleep again. Even M’gann, typically so stoic and even-tempered, seemed lighter than usual when she approached J’onn to ask him how she could help with the preparations.

Just one more day. One more day of careful quiet was all they needed.

So, of course, that night was when the next battle broke out on the Bridge.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She climbed faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Before reading this chapter, please confirm you've read chapter 24! There was some kind of ao3 glitch when I posted 24 on Monday: it appeared halfway down the front page when I updated it and had been shuffled onto page 2 in less than 3 hours, so unless you subscribe to the fic, you may well have missed it.**
> 
>  
> 
> This was originally going to be posted as two chapters, but I realized that that would have forced a break in the action where the action didn't really want to take a break. So the chapter count has gone down by one, but the content quantity is the same. 
> 
> There is a **content warning** for this chapter, but posting it here would amount to a spoiler, so I'm going to put it at the bottom of the chapter. If you know you have triggers, just click the "see end of work for more notes" link to hop down there and see it before you read.

Kara heard the first inklings of the fight, of course. She heard the sound of people moving together, of loud voices, felt the distant vibrations of a hoard travelling together from one part of the Bridge to another.

“Here it goes,” she said, just as she’d been about to lie down to sleep. She sighed and slipped out from under the blanket she’d been sharing with James.

“Kara wait,” he said. “We’re so close. Please, can you just sit this one out?”

“You heard Jeremiah,” Alex added, from her place by the door where she was taking the first watch. “They may have gotten ahold of that weapon today. The… kryptonite.”

But Kara shook her head. “You don’t understand. I can’t, anymore. I can’t sit here and let them slaughter each other if I can stop it. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

“Kara--” J’onn tried, but she was out the door and gone.

Alex followed her out, thinking she’d take a watch post outside the door.

It only took a second. Less than a second.

Kara tore into the sky, straight up, presumably to scout the locations where the clans were gathering.

And then, an image out of Alex’s worst nightmares: a blast of something green launching from somewhere she couldn’t see, down the Bridge.

Kara, dodging almost instantly to the side but, caught off guard, just a fraction of an instant too late, and then jerking in the air as though she’d been shoved.

And then Kara, plummeting like a rock from the sky and crashing to the surface of the Bridge.

 

\--

 

Alex yelled, called for someone that might have been J’onn or James but she wasn’t sure who and both of them came running anyway, right behind her as she sprinted to the crater of broken pavement where Kara lay. Alex noticed, with a surge of relief, that she was moving, even if that movement was to writhe in pain, and Alex scrambled over the rubble and down to the center of the hollow, crashing to her knees there and holding her hands out helplessly over her sister.

“Kara,” she crooned, “it’s okay, just breathe, keep breathing--”

Kara peeled her clenched eyes open and stared at Alex, her mouth locked breathlessly open, as Alex tried to model deep breathing, encouraging Kara to inhale and exhale when she did. The kryptonite was green and glowing, as Jeremiah had said it would be, and it tore through Kara’s clothing and scalded her skin into thick red welts over a red, open burn.

“It -- it -- it hurts,” Kara gasped, fumbling for and then clutching feebly at Alex’s arm. “It hurts,” she said again, sounding almost surprised.

Alex was struck by the realization that Kara had never felt physical pain before in her life.

J’onn crashed to his knees beside Alex, and James on the other side of Kara.

“J--J’onn,” Kara gasped, “they’re coming for us. For me. I heard them. They’re coming for me.”

“Dammit,” J’onn gritted. “Okay.”

James didn’t need to be told to pick Kara up: he just did it, cradling her firmly and walking back to the clinic in long strides while Alex jogged alongside, peeling bits of burned and ripped clothing away from Kara’s wound to try to examine it even as they moved.

J’onn pulled something from his pocket: a gun. Lena’s revolver. He followed them back to the clinic with his back to them, watching for anyone sneaking up behind.

“Lena!” Alex called desperately as they barged back through the clinic. “Lena, need a little help!”

Lena had been sitting up on her mat; she jumped to her feet when Alex called her. “What’s going--oh, no.”

James set Kara down on the mat where he’d been sleeping, placing her head carefully on the pillow, and then shuffled back, his face crumpled, fingers digging into the back of his own neck. “Not again,” he murmured, eyes flitting briefly over to Maggie, “this can’t be happening again.”

Kara writhed in pain. Lena knew where the clean rags had been packed and retrieved one, and a pouch of water, and used them to begin rinsing the wound as gently as she could, while Alex worked with Kara on her breathing, trying to keep her from hyperventilating.

J’onn closed the door behind him, muting the thunder of the approaching horde. “We have to go. Now.”

“How the hell can we do that?” James barked, gesturing incredulously at Kara.

“She fell right out of the sky, J’onn,” Alex confirmed, “she can’t get herself down to the turbine, even if she walks. And without her, we don’t have a way to get Maggie down there, either.”

“We need to figure out a solution to that out _right now_ ,” he snapped, as he began bundling their packs of rations in old cloth and tying them up with short lengths of string and fabric from around the clinic. “They’re coming for her. They’re coming for all of us.”

As if on cue, the din of voices coming from the crowd resolved into a chant: _Burn out the rats! Burn out the rats!_

“People are fucking disgusting,” Lena spat. In any other situation, the obscenity might have been funny, coming from her, who always seemed so composed. “I think this is as good as we can get it,” she said. “I’ve got most of the--what was it? Kryptamide? Cleaned out. But he said she’ll need sun to heal all the way.” She used her teeth to tear open a gauze patch to cover the wound.

Something like panic bubbled up in Alex’s chest. Her entire life lay in the balance on the floor of this clinic: Maggie a mess of bandages and splints and Kara in a medical crisis they couldn’t treat.

Alex looked around the room. Looked at James, who had shuffled forward on his knees to hold Kara’s hand and stroke her hair and was looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world. Looked at Kara, whose body was still shuddering with every breath but who seemed to be calming, ever so slightly, under James’ hands. Looked at J’onn and Winn, who were quickly tying up a pack for everyone to sling over a shoulder, brows furrowed in concentration. Looked at Maggie, who, Alex could tell, was actively suppressing every urge to inform everyone that she didn’t matter that much and could be left behind.

She looked at M’gann, who looked more frightened than Alex had ever--

M’gann.

The rope and the drop harness.

Of course.

Alex looked at J’onn. “I’ve got it.”

 

\--

 

M’gann did not look thrilled by the prospect of dropping down to the water with Maggie and Kara strapped to her, and said as much to Alex, wide-eyed.

“No, of course not,” Alex said. “You’ve put your neck on the line too many times for us already. I’ll do it.”

“No, I will,” J’onn interrupted.

M’gann looked at Alex and J’onn in turn, incredulously.

“It can’t be all that different than some of the rigs I used back in the military,” J’onn said.

“I know how to do it. I’ve dropped once before,” Alex insisted.

J’onn’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Putting aside the question of when the hell you did _that_ ,” he said, “I won’t have you taking that risk when I can do it instead.”

“So you’re just going to jump off the Bridge with Maggie and Kara strapped to you when you’ve never even used--”

“Hey!” M’gann interrupted. Alex’s jaw snapped shut.

M’gann sighed and looked at J’onn. “The harness won’t fit you, so this is moot. Alex and I are about the same size, but my rig won’t fit over your shoulders or around your waist. Guaranteed.” She looked at Alex. “Come on. I’ll help you get set up.”

The chanting and stomping had reached a crescendo right outside their door.

“Um, M’gann,” Winn interrupted nervously. “Not to be-- I mean-- but if you’re not going over the side then you’re going to the turbine with us and we have to, like,” he jerked his head toward the door, “get going, or they won’t have anyone to catch them at the bottom.”

“But if she’s only done this once, she doesn’t know how to--”

“I can talk her through it,” Maggie said.

Alex smiled at Maggie, and then turned and stepped toward M’gann. She offered her forearm like she’d done a few days ago when they’d talked by the door. “Somehow, when we’re out of this mess, I’m going to find a way to repay you for everything you’ve done for us.”

M’gann looked at the offered arm, and then took it as she lifted her gaze to Alex’s eyes. “Let’s just all get out of here in one piece and then we’ll worry about that, okay?”

Kara, still panting heavily from the floor, said, “You can’t go out the front door. They’re all gathered there.” She looked back, over her head, at the clinic’s rear wall, and furrowed her brow. Her heat vision didn’t glow with the same intensity that it usually did, but it was still hot enough to burn a hole through the metal that was large enough for a person to crawl through.

“We’ve gotta go, people,” Winn said, slipping his head and one arm through the strap of the nearest supply bundle. M’gann grabbed another one, and with a supporting nod of J’onn’s head, Lena grabbed a third.

James didn’t move from his place near Kara, his eyes jumping from her to Maggie and back again. “I can’t leave without them here.”

Alex was struck, suddenly, by the knowledge that between Kara and Maggie, James’ life lay before him in crisis just as Alex’s own did--maybe even moreso, considering that she had a longer and more substantial history with J’onn.

“James,” she said softly, “they need you at the bottom. That’s where you can help them best. I’ll get them both down to you. I promise.”

“And while you’re dropping with the first one, who’s going to stay up here to protect the second?” James insisted.

“I am,” J’onn said.

Kara and Alex both opened their mouths to protest, but he silenced them both with a gesture. “I am not losing another set of daughters in the crossfire of a war they never asked to be a part of.”

“Wait for me,” Alex said. “I’ll come back up for you.”

J’onn waved a hand dismissively. “I can climb down the rope.”

“Without a harness? That’s more dangerous than waiting!”

“I’ll wait as long as I can,” J’onn said. “And then if I have to, I’ll climb down.” He turned to look at James, his expression final. “Go,” he said.

James looked tormented.

“We’re going to need you, James,” Winn piped up, “Because like, there are guards down there and it’s going to be hard to break the turbine out of its pulleys and with Kara hurt, you’re the strongest one of us.”

“You have to go, James,” Maggie said through her teeth, and Kara only looked at him and nodded.

James turned his head and exhaled sharply once, and then twice, through his nose, before letting loose a near-animal growl. “You keep them safe,” he said, pointing aggressively at J’onn.

J’onn nodded solemnly.

“It’s okay,” Kara breathed, putting her hand on James’s arm, “go, and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

James clenched his jaw and nodded, nostrils flaring, eyes a little wet. And then, with only a moment’s hesitation, he bent down and brought his lips to hers. When he pulled back, she smiled at him.

“I waited too long to do that,” he said, “and we’re going to do it again. Okay?”

Kara smiled warmly at him and nodded. “We are. We will. Now _go_ , James.”

He nodded and tore himself away from her with a force that looked physically painful. He picked up a pack, and before he joined the others near the hole in the wall, he  knelt beside Maggie, touching one of her hands with his. “Drop safely,” he said, with a smile. “I’ll see you on the River.”

She nodded.

He stood, then, and joined the others at the back.  Alex grabbed the harness and began to loosen its buckles while J’onn pulled out the old stretcher-board, the one they’d almost never had reason to use, from its place behind the microscope table, and was setting it down beside Maggie, preparing to shift her onto it.

“I’m going to strap you to this board while you talk Alex through getting herself hooked up. Okay?” He said.

Maggie looked wide-eyed at him, and then said, through gritted teeth, “Okay. Loosen this bandage so I can talk.”

Outside, noises and chants were building, the crowd gathering. “ _Send her out, send her out,”_ they were yelling now, and Alex looked at Kara and wanted to set the entire mob on fire.

Alex strapped herself into the harness and fed the rope through the belay device. J’onn picked up Kara and set her close to the hole in the back wall, and then together, he and Alex carried Maggie’s stretcher over as well.

“Maggie first,” Kara said, before Alex could open her mouth to ask.

“They’re coming after _you_ ,” Maggie shouted indignantly, and then winced against the pain it caused.

Alex’s eyes leapt from one to the other, lost.

Ultimately, though, she knew she couldn’t suppress the instinct she’d built over her entire adult life to protect Kara first, to always put Kara first.

“Alex,” Kara gritted. In her eyes, Alex could tell that she had anticipated what Alex was about to do. “Alex, my powers are reduced but I’m not defenceless. I still have some heat vision and cold breath, and I still can’t be easily hurt by anyone who doesn’t have kryptonite. And Maggie deserves to be put first by someone other than James for once in her life.”

Alex bit her lip and shook her head with a sigh. Of course Kara had heard her conversation with Maggie in the tower the previous day. Of _course_ she had.

“Let’s go,” J’onn pressed.

Alex fixed him with narrowed eyes. “You don’t let anything happen to her.”

“Alex,” J’onn assured her, “you _know_ that nothing will touch her while I draw breath to prevent it.”

She nodded grimly.

Maggie talked Alex through the double-eight knot she used to tie the end of the rope to a support-post just outside the back wall of the clinic, coaching her to check the switch on the belay device to make sure the pulleys would move in the right direction and then tug on the rope to check. The gap between the clinic and the railing was narrow, but it was just wide enough to lay Maggie there lengthwise. Alex and J’onn tied short lengths of rope to the hand grips at each of the corners of the stretcher, and then tipped it up onto its edge to create space for Alex to crouch beside it while J’onn knotted the rope to the harness clips at Alex’s hips, Maggie gritting her teeth against the discomfort of hanging from the straps.

Alex paused J'onn before he could begin to tie Maggie to her harness, just long enough to bend down and press her lips warmly to Maggie's cold ones. Maggie parted her lips and kissed back as best as her jaw and her position allowed.

"Until the next one," Alex murmured when they parted.

She nodded at J'onn, who smiled grimly at her and began to tie the knots.

As Alex stood, J’onn supported the stretcher, shifting part of its weight onto the railing as Alex swung her leg over, and then, carefully, as Alex sat back into the harness, guiding it over the edge until Maggie hung suspended behind Alex, horizontally, swinging just the slightest bit.

"Be safe," he said.

She set her jaw and nodded. "Go back to Kara.” He smiled at her, as warmly as he could manage under the circumstances, and turned to duck back into the clinic. 

“You remember how the lever works?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah.” Alex swallowed hard. She looked down, scouring the surface of the River for a sign of the others. It was dark, only a fine crescent moon in the sky, and she couldn’t see anything down in the inky black.

There was nothing to do but take it on faith that they’d be there. “Okay. Big jump to dodge the lower level, and then we’ll take it slower. On three, two, one--”

She pushed off with her legs and jerked the lever down.

For a moment it was terrifying, as Maggie’s weight seemed to disappear from behind her in the fall, and as soon as they’d cleared the lower level Alex released the lever, stopping them partway down. With a quiet _oof_ , Maggie’s weight yanked on Alex’s harness and settled against the backs of her thighs.

“Okay?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “Let’s keep going.”

Alex released the lever more gently this time, rolling them down the line in short fits and starts, Maggie’s weight a firm, steady pull against her harness. The lights of the Bridge receded above them, until:

“We’re good, Danvers,” Maggie said.

Alex glanced down. They hovered not far above the water.

“Do you see them?” Maggie asked. “I can’t really turn my head.”

Alex looked to her left, and then to her right. Nothing but darkness, no sound but the water of the river and the distant chants of the crowd above them, outside the clinic.

And then, suddenly, half the lights of the Bridge went dark.

They must have broken the turbine free.

“Winn!” Alex yelled. “James! M’gann! Lena! WINN! We’re here!”

She waited. Nothing.

“We’re by the tower!” she called. “M’gann! James!”

Her heart rate began to rise. She couldn’t possibly climb back up with Maggie’s weight--they were stuck, stranded, until someone found them.

“Alex!”

From somewhere to her left, a beam of light. A torch.

“Alex! Maggie!”

That was definitely James.

“Here!” she called back. “We’re over here!”

The beam swept over her once, twice, and then shot back and settled on her.

“There they are!” she heard a voice say. Lena’s.

Alex put a hand up to shield her eyes, squinting against the light, until, emerging out of the darkness:

A long, silver cylinder, with smaller floatation cylinders on each side.

James, standing barefoot at the back, pushing them along with something that looked like a very long pole or length of pipe that they must have torn off the far tower where the turbine had been rigged up.

Lena, sitting near him, holding his boots.

Winn, holding a torch on them, and M’gann, reaching out to grab ahold of them.

It was a ridiculous sight, objectively; more absurd than anything in any of the books: all these people huddled on this big metal cylinder, trying to keep their balance.

Alex had never been more relieved by anything in her life.

James worked to keep the turbine still with the pole, M’gann helping by taking a solid grip on the climbing rope, as Lena and Winn carefully untied Maggie’s stretcher and hauled it onto their makeshift raft.

“Flip the pulley switch!” Maggie called to Alex. A beat. “You better make it back down here to me, Danvers.”

Alex flipped the switch and inhaled sharply. She took hold of the upper rope with her hands, wrapped the dangling tail around one calf and caught it with the sole of her opposite foot, like Maggie had taught her, and began to climb.

If there was any small mercy, it was that it was truly much easier to climb in dry clothing compared to how soaked she’d been the last time, and she felt light without Maggie’s weight hanging from her. She remembered the tips Maggie had given her last time: to find a rhythm that worked for her, to match her breathing to it. Halfway up, she wanted to stop and rest, but the yelling from the Bridge had gotten louder and more frantic--probably with the loss of so much light--and so she kept climbing, her arms and legs burning with the exertion.

How on Earth had Maggie been able to do this, three and four times in a row, carrying _ten gallons of water_ every time?

The noise at the top was deafening. They weren’t chanting anymore: she saw, when she reached the top, that they were beating down the door of the clinic--still apparently unaware of the escape hatch they’d created in the back. Through the hole, Alex could see that J’onn had pressed a table and a shelving unit up against the door.

Alex grabbed the railing and hauled herself over. Kara was huddled in the space between the clinic and the railing, shivering a little against the wall, as J’onn stood over her protectively. Alex could see the handle of Lena’s gun sticking out of his pocket.

“You okay?” J’onn asked her.

Alex nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

With their help, Kara rose to shaky feet and pressed herself to Alex’s back where the tying-ropes dangled. J’onn knotted one pair of ropes against the back of Kara’s thighs, the other around her waist. Kara shivered and shuddered but was still able to support some of her own weight as she and Alex climbed over the railing, and then wrapped her arms and legs firmly around Alex’s shoulders and hips.

“Hang on tight,” Alex said. “Three, two, one--”

Alex braked them again once they’d cleared the lower level. “You okay?” she asked Kara, who wheezed, “I’m fine, this won’t hurt me. Let’s just drop so you can get back up there for J’onn.”

“Yes ma’am,” Alex said, smiling, yanking down on the lever so that they fell freely down the line.

In the thrill of the fall, Alex had a flashback to her teenaged self, soaring over the river on Kara’s back. In an ill-timed flash, she couldn’t help but muse on the reversal of their roles.

“Alex!” Maggie screamed from somewhere below her, and Alex instinctively released the lever, snapping them into place not far above the water’s surface.

As M’gann held the rope and Winn used the staff to hold the boat steady, James untied Kara and settled her down into his arms with an audible sigh of relief. Toward the far end of the turbine, Alex could see that they’d untied Maggie from the stretcher and she seemed to be resting against Lena, who held her securely in place.

“You doing okay?” M’gann asked Alex. “I can take this climb if you’re toast.”

But Alex shook her head. The time it would take to get the harness off of her and onto M’gann, balancing awkwardly on this machine that wasn’t designed to be used as a raft, was not time they could spare.

“I got this,” she said. She flipped the switch on the pulley and began to climb.

By the time she was a third of the way up, her arms and legs were burning. Her palms were raw--she didn’t have any gloves--and the harness pinched everywhere it touched, at her shoulders and her hips and her waist and her thighs. Halfway up, her muscles trembled and her forearms cramped in a way she’d never imagined was possible; she paused for a moment, shaking out her hands, and in that moment heard a metallic clang and a crash and a surge of noise from the crowd above.

“J’onn!” she yelled, and began climbing again, even faster than she’d climbed below; she was two thirds of the way up, three quarters of the way…

At the top of her rope she could make out the signs of a fight, and as she got closer she could see J’onn fending off attackers from all sides in the narrow space behind the clinic, whose entire structure seemed to have lurched to the side under some immense pressure.

She climbed faster.

J’onn, cornered, swung one leg and then the other over the railing, and then crouched down and grabbed with both hands at the rope, dropping himself down and catching it with his legs, sending Alex swinging so that she was forced to stop climbing and just hold on.

“Wait! I’m coming!” Alex cried.

“There’s no time! I’m coming down to you!” J’onn called. “Hold steady!”

So Alex did, watching breathlessly as J’onn began to lower himself down the rope, hand under hand, his feet skimming along its surface to stabilize it.

Above him, people began to tug and prod at the knot that kept the rope tied to the railing. Alex made out a red patch and a green one, working side by side.

J’onn had been right, when he said they would become the threat that would unify the clans.

She knew that her weight combined with J’onn’s would pull the knot tight, making it almost impossible to unravel from the top.

He lowered himself all the way to her, swinging his legs past her body to fall below her, and then transferring his grip from the rope to the straps of the back of her harness. She grunted softly under the new weight.

Above, she saw something shiny glinting in the hands of one of the Clanspeople. A knife.

“They’re going to cut the rope!” she yelled.

And then a shuffle of bodies and someone lifted something large, a gun or a canon, glowing green from the muzzle, aiming down toward the glow of the torch below.

“Turn off that light!” Alex heard a voice yell below them -- Maggie’s, staring upward, so much more accustomed than anyone else to the view of the Bridge from this angle.

In one fluid movement, J’onn wrapped his legs around Alex’s hips and one arm around her torso, taking a firm grip on the harness shoulder strap. With the other, he pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed it back up at the Bridge.

“This’ll be loud,” he warned, and then fired. The body holding the kryptonite gun slumped over the railing, the gun falling from his grip over the edge and crashing into the water below them. The one with the knife growled in rage and dove for the top of their rope, and then the glint of a second knife joined them, and J’onn fired twice more, causing one knife to fall to the water and both people to jump backward, howling, gripping at their knees and shoulders.

“Go!” J’onn yelled, and Alex flipped the pulley switch and yanked the lever open as far as she dared, not quite to the point of freefall but close, so that her body and J’onn’s, together, hurtled down toward the surface of the River.

She didn’t release the lever at the bottom; she knew that J’onn’s grip wouldn’t be able to withstand the jolt of the pulley wheels catching on the line. So they crashed, as one, into the water.

Submerged, for a fraction of a moment, everything felt calm, and quiet, and comparatively still. But just for a moment. J’onn unwrapped himself from Alex and she could feel him kicking toward air. But she didn’t know how to do what he did: her boots felt heavy and increasingly waterlogged, her every muscle burned, slack and weak with exhaustion. She felt strange and weightless, fully submerged like this, but also like she didn’t know which way was up, didn’t know how to--

She flailed for the rope and found it, tugging at it. The rope went up, she could follow the rope up to air--

And then the tension on the rope was gone.

Someone had finally cut it.

Alex’s lungs burned, she felt her muscles struggling with what little energy they had left and yet somehow they couldn’t move, the rope a growing weight on her harness as it sank into the water, tugging her down. Sharply, and not of her own volition, her body tried to take a breath, and then another, but there was no air, no oxygen, only water rushing up her nose.

Suddenly, a tug on her harness, and then another, from the shoulders. Something was moving behind her, yanking her, pulling her until she broke the surface, hacking and flailing and coughing up water and gasping for air.

“Hey, hey, hey. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” J’onn wrapped his arms around her floundering limbs, pulling her back against his chest, making a raft of his body to keep her head up in the air. She could feel him underwater, behind her, working and kicking with his legs.

“I’ve got you. Don’t fight me, just try to keep your body still and stiff and I can keep you up. They’re coming to get us. Just breathe. Breathe. Breathe.” Alex listened, honed into the sound of his voice, and tried to match her breaths to his words.

“Alex!” she heard. “Alex!”

Kara’s voice, panicked and frantic, and Maggie’s, cracked and frightened.

“She’s okay,” J’onn called back.

The turbine slid up behind them. Alex couldn’t see who was where, couldn’t register anything but hands -- M’ganns -- hauling her up out of the water, draping her unceremoniously over the top of the turbine in a way that wasn’t comfortable but was secure and wouldn’t let her slide off. Then J’onn, equally soaked, flopped down beside her.

She turned her head to look at him there, both of their faces upside down and drenched and shivering, every lungful of air still feeling like rebirth.

He smiled at her.

Behind her, she heard Maggie begging, “Check her, is she okay, tell me if she’s okay!” and a shuffle of bodies. Lena’s voice said “Be careful,” and then Alex felt a trembling body press itself against her side, legs draped beside hers, an arm around her waist, a face pressed to her shoulder.

“Never scare me like that again,” Kara muttered into her wet shirt.

Alex tried to laugh but it sent her body into a spasm of coughing. Kara clung tighter to her, and when the coughing subsided, Alex smiled, turned, and wrapped an arm around her sister’s waist.

“Deal,” she said.

And, indeed, though they both lived long lives, she never did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: deep water submersion and near-drowning.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The part where I broke your heart and made you hate me? Yeah, I’d take that back if I could.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to space out the posting of these last few chapters, I really did, but... I've got some craziness starting with work and stuff and I kind of need this monkey off my back. I didn't expect it to take anywhere near this long to get everything posted, mostly because I've added something like 20,000 words to this thing in the process of revising it, making sure all the loose ends got woven in and, actually, completely rewriting the ending... twice.
> 
> So here's the final chapter. Nothing left but the epilogue now. The epilogue won't go up quite as quickly because it's not quite ready for prime time yet -- still tweaking it. But it'll be up soon, and it will hopefully address the few lingering questions you may still have after you read this update.

James poled them upRiver, the night’s small mercy being that there was no wind, and so the work against the current was strenuous but still manageable. They huddled in tense silence, J’onn shivering and Alex fighting to keep her teeth from chattering, until they made it around the bend in the River, the chaos and violence and semi-darkness of the Bridge disappearing behind the hills. M’gann freed the heavy, waterlogged rope from Alex’s harness and began to coil it up. Not far upRiver, they found a place to run the nose of the turbine aground, sheltered by some trees and overgrowth. As they moved into shallower water near the bank, James had to move his grip further and further down the pole, and Alex was shocked both by its length (and the depth of the River it indicated) and by James’ ability to handle it: as it emerged from the water, it was revealed to be easily five or six times her own height. M’gann hopped down and tied their raft in place, while Lena, showing more physical strength than Alex thought she had, hefted Maggie and settled her in a flat space between some tree roots. Alex and Kara climbed down supporting one another, and then J’onn made it on his own. Winn and James pulled some of the supplies from where they’d been tied to the back of the turbine and tossed them to Lena and M’gann.

Alex was unsettled by the soft ground, just as she’d been that first time she’d stood on it when she was fourteen. And this ground, soggy as it was, was even softer. She stood there, shifting from foot to foot, feeling its give.

Lena opened a bundle and unfolded a blanket, tossing it to Alex, smirking as she watched her moving her feet.

“It does feel strange, doesn’t it?” she said. “Take off your wet clothes and wrap up in this. Then,” she quirked her lips and tipped her head over toward Maggie, who waited patiently, “she wants to talk to you.”

Alex took the blanket and picked her way over to where Maggie lay. Maggie eyed her, inscrutable, while she crouched down and peeled off her wet shirt and pants and wrapped the blanket over herself. She kept her underwear on.

“This feels familiar,” Alex said, smiling as she crouched down under the blanket. “This feels an awful lot like something I’ve done with you before.”

Maggie’s lips quirked a smile at that and then looked down at her own body, lifting her arms. “Take my overshirt, Alex,” she said.

Alex waved it away. “I’ll be fine under the blanket.”

“No, Alex, just -- take the shirt, would you?” Maggie insisted. “It’s technically yours anyway. Help me get it off.”

Alex looked at Maggie, saw the strength and force in her eyes as she spoke, and understood: there wasn’t much Maggie could do to help Alex right now, but this -- offering to give up one layer of warmth -- was something that made her feel like she was contributing.

Wordlessly, and with a tight smile, Alex helped Maggie to sit up and slip out of the overshirt, shrugging it on and buttoning the handful of buttons that still clung to the fabric. It let her slip out of her wet undershirt, which was nice.

“Thanks,” she said, as she slung the blanket around herself, over the shirt.

Maggie smiled. “How are you?”

Alex smiled back and shrugged. “I made it.”

“Yeah,” Maggie nodded, her eyes suddenly wet, “Yeah, you did. Because you’re a badass, Danvers.” She let out a shuddering sigh and closed her eyes. “All I could hear was everyone shouting, I heard M’gann calling your name, and splashing in the water, and then J’onn yelled ‘She went under!’ and then I saw the rope fall and Winn sounded like he was going to have a heart attack and I couldn’t even turn my head far enough--” She swallowed. “I hate this, feeling so helpless.”

“I know,” Alex murmured, cupping Maggie’s cheek. The swelling, she noticed, had gone down even since the previous day. Healing, she thought. “But it’s not forever. You’re getting better every day. And we wouldn’t be here right now, if not for you.”

“Are you sure it’s a good thing, to be here where we are?”

“When the Clans are fighting and the Bridge is about to be cleared out and demolished? When we don’t know what the land-dwellers would do if they got their hands on J’onn or Kara, or what the Clans would do if they got their hands on you, or, well, Kara? _Yes_ , it’s a good thing, Maggie!” Alex insisted.

Alex shifted from her crouch to sit on one of the prominent tree roots, the tail of her blanket tucked under her. “Listen,” she said, “you put a lot on the line to bring us that book. And, sure, it didn’t end up working the way you thought it would, but we still ended up needing it to get off the Bridge.”

“Assuming your -- Jeremiah -- follows through the way he said he would, and puts supplies at the places he marked.”

“And we can’t control that,” Alex said. “At this point, we have to just trust, and try. And anyway, I’m pretty sure he’ll come through.”

Maggie turned her head and pressed it into Alex’s touch.

“I was just surviving until I met you, Maggie,” Alex murmured. “I think we all were, in our own way. I wasn’t unhappy or anything, but I just… lived. Every day was about having enough water, having enough food, keeping the clinic stocked, making sure Kara was okay. I thought every day would be the same for the rest of my life. Then you came along and gave me so many new things to want. So many new things to strive for.”

Maggie smiled softly.

“I know you’ve survived on your body for your whole adult life,” Alex said quietly. “I can only imagine how you must feel, when you need it and it can’t take care of you right now. If I have any regret at all, it’s that I couldn’t track down the goons who did this to you and make them _wish_ I’d left them in the state you’re in now.”

Maggie laughed gently. “Violent vengeance? Kara would hate that.”

Alex smiled. “So would James.” She chuckled. “They’re sweet together.”

“They are. He’s had it _bad_ for almost as long as I have, you know. But he has better self-restraint.”

“Thank the stars for your lack of self-restraint, then,” Alex grinned, poking playfully at Maggie’s nose.

Maggie laughed quietly, and then faltered. “You really mean that, after everything?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Why, would you take it back?”

“The part where I broke your heart and made you hate me? Yeah, I’d take that back if I could.”

“But everything that came before that?”

Maggie reached up and rested her hand, the bandages a little damp from water spray, against Alex’s jaw. “No, I wouldn’t give up anything that came before that. Except for the lying, I mean.”

“Yeah, let’s not do that part again,” Alex agreed.

Maggie swallowed. “I want to protect you from everything,” she said earnestly. “I want to keep you safe from--from anything that might hurt you. I hate that I can’t do that right now.”

“You couldn’t do that anyway, Maggie. I think that’s the first thing you’ll need to learn if we’re going to do this.”

Maggie licked her lips and nodded a little.

A beat passed. Then: “So--” Maggie hesitated. She visibly steeled herself, and continued: “So we’re doing this again. You and me.”

Alex smiled. “Trying to. Yeah. That’s what I want. If that’s what you want, I mean.”

Maggie nodded vigorously, then winced.

“Don’t do that,” Alex said softly.

“You--you know what you’re getting into,” Maggie said. “My hands and legs are wrecked. I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk all that well, or--”

“Hush,” Alex said. “You’ll be you. And we’ll deal with the unknowns when we know them, okay? Together.”

The sound of footsteps on the brush made them both look over.

“We need to get going,” J’onn said. He, like Alex, was wrapped in a blanket, his damp clothes clutched in one hand. “I’d like to cover a little more ground under the cover of darkness.”

Alex nodded and picked up her wet things. She took a moment to wring them out. J’onn, meanwhile, had shifted his blanket to his waist in order to free his arms, and crouched down by Maggie. “Do you mind if I carry you over like this?” he asked, gesturing to his bare chest. “I can get James if you prefer.”

Maggie just shot him a look. After all they’d been through together, he couldn’t really think she’d care about his not wearing a shirt while he carried her five steps to their raft.

Alex draped her clothes over the turbine, hoping they would dry a little, and then took a seat straddling it, her blanket draped over her shoulders with its edge tucked between her skin and the cold metal. When J’onn carried Maggie over, he settled her against Alex’s chest, and Alex bundled her blanket around both of them, taking warmth from Maggie who was only too happy to share it. The skin of Maggie’s shoulder and arm pressed into the skin of Alex’s chest where her shirt was missing its buttons near the collar. Kara, who still trembled with the lingering effects of the kryptonite, sat in a similar position with J’onn, curled into the hold of the man who’d been a father to her for longer than any other parent she’d ever had.

James went to the back of the turbine again, balancing barefoot and using the pole to push them off. Winn’s multi-tool had an extension for cutting metal, so they’d cut the pole in half and agreed to stay in the shallower water near the shore. Winn took the other half and stood near the nose, helping James with the pushing, moving seamlessly from one side to the other to keep them going straight.

Quietly, so quietly Alex didn’t hear it at first, someone began to hum a tune. She recognized it: a Current folksong, but just the melody, not the lyrics. It was Winn, singing wordlessly in time with the rhythm of his pushing.

Then M’gann found the harmony and began to sing along.

J’onn was facing Alex, his back to the direction of travel, and she saw him smile, quietly, but warmly.

Maggie ducked her head and turned it just enough to nuzzle Alex’s collarbone, right at the gap in her shirt collar, brushing her lips there. Alex curled involuntarily into the touch, and Maggie settled deeper into Alex’s arms, into her heart, and closed her eyes.

In a few hours -- when M’gann and J’onn and even Lena had rotated through shifts of pushing, though Alex was given a reprieve to recover from her climbing and near-drowning -- the sun crested the horizon. They found an inlet where they could hide their makeshift raft. Alex left Maggie with Lena to have her dressings checked and changed if necessary. M’gann and Winn began to prepare rations. And Alex followed J’onn and James, who carried Kara, to a strip of shore that was reasonably concealed from outsiders but still exposed to the morning sun. She carefully peeled away the gauze dressing on Kara’s wound and then they sat there, Kara still trembling in James’ arms, her hand in Alex’s hand, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, all of them hoping that Jeremiah was right, and that it would heal her.

Sure enough: soon, she stopped shaking.

Soon after that, the red, inflamed skin around her wound cooled to a healthier tone.

Soon after that, all that remained of the wound on Kara’s shoulder was a faint spider-shaped scar.

Winn picked his way along the shoreline to them. “This floor feels so weird under my feet,” he said, looking down at the mud, “I can’t get used to it. But anyway. There’s food, if you want it.”

“Ugh, I could eat about sixteen rations all to myself right now,” Kara groaned, sure-footed as she stood up. “Let’s go.”

Alex smiled.

At their little campsite, Alex sat beside Maggie, helping her to eat the ration that Lena had mashed by hand. Maggie leaned into Alex’s side and didn’t complain.

And there they were, as the River rushed close to their feet, greeting the start of a new day.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

When Maggie grew old, her hair went gray with streaks of black.

“Salt and pepper,” people would say, though Alex never liked that expression. Something about using food seasoning to describe Maggie’s hair made her uncomfortable. But Maggie herself didn’t seem to mind. She let herself be vain about her hair, styling it carefully and trimming it regularly, and because it made her happy, it made Alex happy.

When Alex grew old, her hair thinned and turned snow-white. At some point along the way, when it was sandy and speckled (“Mousy,” Alex would say. “Warm,” Maggie would retort), she had it cut short, close to her scalp.

“High five, haircut buddy!” Winn had exclaimed when he saw the cut. “Well, actually, I think yours is shorter than mine? But still. Awesome. I love it.”

Maggie liked to run her fingers through it, first to mess it up, and then to comb it back into place.

“I thought you were the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen from the very first time I saw you,” Maggie teased, “But if you’d had this short cut back then, I might have actually combusted.”

Maggie liked to run her fingers through Alex’s hair because it was an intimacy she could deliver with her left hand without feeling clumsy.

She regained some use of it. The bones reset, but not perfectly. The fine, fragile ones in her palm would have been impossible to reset perfectly without an operation that Alex and Lena had not been equipped to deliver. The doctors in the North Country looked at her x-rays and said there was a chance they could improve things with extensive surgery, re-attaching the nerves and breaking and re-setting many of the bones, but there was no guarantee it would improve significantly and the recovery work would be extensive.

Maggie decided against it.

She could open and close the hand, to some extent, and could use it to pick up medium-sized lightweight objects like apples or folded-up shirts. But it lacked dexterity and grip strength, and its sensation was weak in all the fingers except the thumb. Its resting position was more open than most hands would normally be, a function of the position it had held in the splints.

Maggie could feel changes in weather in her hands, her legs, and her shoulder. In the spring and autumn, when the changes came fast and often, Alex knew to keep liniment oil in their home, so that when Maggie woke up sore, Alex could spend a gentle stretch of time working it into her aches before they each went about their days.

Sometimes, Alex was pretty sure Maggie would invent morning aches as an excuse for the rubdown.

Alex didn’t mind that at all.

In the early days, when the splints came off and the hand was withered and weak, Maggie would try to hide it from her. She’d keep it around Alex’s back when they kissed, or out of the way when they made love. When Alex asked, Maggie, determined not to lie, confessed that that was what she was doing.

Alex asked if she could touch the hand. Maggie said yes, and Alex took it between her hands, massaging it gently with her thumbs.

Alex asked if she could kiss the hand. Maggie took a shaky, nervous breath, and nodded.

Alex started with the palm, its imperfections tangible through the skin, and pressed her lips there. Then she moved to its back, and then kissed each finger in turn.

Maggie watched, her lip caught between her teeth, her pupils gradually widening.

With her eyes locked on Maggie’s, watching for any sign of discomfort or displeasure, Alex took Maggie’s index finger into her mouth. Maggie gasped, but didn’t try to move away.

“Okay?” Alex asked, pulling back just enough. Maggie nodded.

So Alex worked through all the fingers, sucking on each one, licking the creases of the knuckles and the webbing between the fingers, and ending with the thumb, her eyes locked on Maggie’s the whole time, while Maggie’s eyes were locked on the things Alex’s mouth was doing to her. Maggie began to move her hand, then, using her thumb to stroke and play gently with Alex’s tongue, her breathing growing heavier, more driven.

When they got into bed, Alex took off her clothes and straddled Maggie and guided Maggie’s weak left hand to touch her everywhere: her face, her breasts, her arms, stomach, thighs, and hips, all while Maggie watched wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“God, you’re wet,” Maggie said wonderingly, watching as Alex guided the tips of Maggie’s fingers between her legs, to her clit. And then she surged up and turned Alex onto her back, holding herself up on her right elbow while her left hand worked.

“Help me with the pressure,” Maggie breathed, and Alex brought one hand down to pull back the hood and the other to help Maggie stroke harder while she worked her hips firmly, shamelessly, against Maggie’s fingers. After Alex came, her hands’ flopped back to her sides, but Maggie’s hand stayed where it was, between her legs, just slipping around tenderly, exploring, feeling how warm Alex was there, how wet she was for her.

“I love that hand,” Alex murmured in her post-orgasmic haze. “Just like I love the rest of you.”

Maggie would always prefer to use her more-capable right hand for sex, and never used her left, with its reduced sensation, for penetration. But she never hid that left hand from Alex again.

 

\--

 

To everyone’s great relief, Jeremiah’s connections delivered along the River.

After they ate that first meal by the riverbank, they scuttled themselves deeper into the woods, wrapped themselves into their blankets, and slept. J’onn and Alex hung their clothes in the tree branches to drip dry, and then J’onn borrowed James’ clothing to take the first watch.

James and Kara bundled into their blankets together.

(Alex lamented to herself that she didn’t have the privacy to be able to tease Kara for getting to fall asleep on top of her dreamy, muscular, mostly-naked boyfriend.)

Alex wanted nothing more than to curl into Maggie, or to have Maggie curl into her, but on the hard ground, Maggie couldn’t find comfort in any position but flat on her back. Anything else aggravated her shoulder or her collarbone or her spine. So Alex lay on her side beside her, offering one arm as a pillow, and curling the opposite hand into the crook of Maggie’s elbow.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Maggie asked quietly, toward the sky.

Alex smiled. She’d been given reprieve from taking watch for the night. “Yeah,” she said.

The palms of Alex’s hands were red and swollen, her shoulders and hips and thighs bruised from the harness. Lena had rubbed the bruises with a healing lotion and Alex had rubbed her hands with an antibiotic, anti-inflammatory salve. Maggie cringed when she saw the hands, but then she smiled a little and lifted each one in the cradle of her own wrapped palms and pressed a kiss to the center of the welts there.

(“You two are so gross,” Kara had said, with no malice at all.)

They travelled half of the next night to the first place marked on the map. Alex remembered what Jeremiah had said: look for the plants that are out of place. That first one had been easy: with a torch, she scanned the hillside until she spotted the marigold in the field of daisies, next to a rock. She ran up to it, Kara and J’onn right behind her, and sure enough, the rock was hollow, made of some kind of waterproof plaster. Inside they found, as promised, an inflatable boat (self-inflating when the valve was opened!), four collapsible oars, a canister and metal device that J’onn said would combine to make a portable stove, some batteries and a solar charger and a torch, tablets that J’onn said were instant water purifiers, some large plastic tarps, and a box of dried rations.

It also contained a letter.

Alex could tell by looking at it that it was writing, and she could sort of make out what it said, but she had only ever read words printed by machine and these were clearly written by hand. In the envelope with the letter was one of the plastic writing-sticks -- a pen.

“Here,” J’onn said, holding out a hand, and Alex set the note in it. “I’ll show you how to read and write handwriting next, once things are settled,” he smiled.

J’onn unfolded the letter and began to read.

_Dear travelers,_

_My name is Katherine, and I’m writing this letter on behalf of Jeremiah. He’s not a very confident writer (he asked me to tell you that) so we thought this would be easier for everyone. I have heard so much about you from him. Kara and Alex, in particular. I look forward to getting to meet you one day._

_So, here we go. He’s speaking and I’m writing. I don’t write your language perfectly, so I apologize for any mistakes._

(“Like most of us would know the difference,” Lena laughed.)

_If you’re reading this, you’ve made it to the first drop point. I will be so relieved when someone tells me that this drop got picked up, because that will mean that you got away, and you found it, and you're traveling to safety._

_This will be the big drop. The later ones will mostly have travel food and soap and other essentials like that. We’re also working on finding a few tents. Hopefully these tarps will keep you out of the rain until that happens._

(“What’s a tent?” Winn asked.)

_Our friends are excited for you. They would like to meet you, once you get to safety. I am the only Bridge person any of them have ever met._

_If there’s anything you need that we haven’t provided, please leave us a note. We’ll try to get it to you at a later drop point, if we can._

_Alex and Kara: I am so proud of you for who you’ve become._

_J’onn: I will forever be in your debt for the care you’ve given to my daughters for all these years._

_Be well, and be safe._

_Jeremiah_

Before they left that spot the next night, they pushed the turbine out into the River and let the current carry it back toward the Bridge.

(Winn watched it float away until it grew too small to see.)

Alex saw J’onn write something on a torn-off corner of the envelope and drop it in the empty hollow rock.

Two drop-points later--marked by a cat-tail appearing to grow out of dry land--they found a stack of inflatable life preservers in with the dried rations of food.

Alex, who had been having nightmares of being trapped underwater, wore hers whenever they were on the boat.

 

\--

 

Of all of them, Alex had the hardest time adjusting to life in their new home.

J’onn had lived most of his life in a nation with social norms more similar to those in the north country, so he didn’t have much trouble. Kara, too, was surprised by how much she remembered and could apply. Winn’s prowess in engineering and technology carried over well. James was naturally easygoing, and that, combined with his strengthening closeness with Kara, seemed to soften the peaks and valleys of his cultural adjustment. M’gann, who had survived so long by herself on the Bridge, had a survivor’s instinct that encountered this as just another challenge to overcome to stay alive. Lena said that even this world where she couldn’t understand the rules, where she struggled to speak to anyone, felt freer than she’d felt under her mother’s gaze every day, as the prospective heir to the leadership of Armistice.

And Maggie -- well, Maggie had reached her own rock bottom back on the Bridge, and so every step up from that -- every painstaking moment of physical therapy, the weeks she spent with her jaw wired shut by a north country doctor because it hadn’t aligned properly under Alex and Lena’s makeshift care, every moment spent in language study with headache-inducing focus, all of it was yet another step up from that bottom point that she’d hit. All of it felt like healing.

Alex, much to her own surprise, found herself longing for the Bridge.

The Bridge, for all of its horrors, had its routines and its rules, and she had known how to operate within them to keep herself and her family alive. Here, in this new world, the technology was so much more sophisticated than anything she’d ever seen, so she was useless as a doctor. The language was new and frustrating, and currency was much more complicated, and everything was just so big and sprawling and open.

When they arrived at the nation border and were accepted as refugees, they were placed in a pair of small apartments, one apartment for four people, with each apartment having five rooms in it. Two of the rooms were for sleeping, one for cooking, one for the toilet, and one for resting and gathering, and this seemed like altogether too many rooms to Alex, who had lived in a single room her whole life.

They had all grown accustomed to being together, by that point, so they all lived in one apartment, and indeed in one room in that apartment, all sleeping in that resting room (the “living room,” J’onn called it) and occasionally travelling to the cooking room (“kitchen”) to make food. But then the neighbors complained, said that there were too many of them in such a small space and that surely they would develop and then transmit diseases from overcrowding. Alex, upon hearing of this, had wanted to go to the neighbors and solve the problem with her fists -- something that felt like it was, finally, under her control -- but Maggie, who was standing by then and walking with crutches, her left leg having become weight-bearing twenty or thirty days into their river trip -- put herself between Alex and the door.

“They’re just assholes who don’t understand us,” she said. “They don’t know what we’ve lived through. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

Maggie was more effective than anyone, including Kara and J’onn, at helping Alex manage her frustration and her anger. Alex had always accepted comfort from Kara, on the Bridge, because Kara knew her better than anyone, but here, every moment of comfort offered by Kara was more evidence that Alex couldn’t care for and protect the sister she’d cared for and protected for as long as they’d known each other. And J’onn, well. He couldn’t possibly understand her anger. He hadn’t lived on the Bridge his whole life, like she had.

Alex, in a huff, had said that if they were going to divide into the two apartments, she wanted Maggie and Kara and J’onn in hers with her. She may have noticed the sidelong glances cast between James and Kara, and then between both of them and Maggie, but she didn’t care.

(Somehow, quietly, James ended up living with Kara, Maggie, and her, and J’onn moved into the other apartment.)

(Alex found she didn’t have the energy to fight that, on top of everything else, especially since being with James clearly made Kara so happy.)

They still all slept in the “living room.” Kara and James would slip into one of the sleeping rooms if they wanted to be more… intimate.

Physical intimacy was a rare thing for Alex and Maggie, at first, because Maggie’s recovering body made it difficult. They found ways to make it work, sometimes, when they had the place to themselves. Maggie’s body was not as mobile or flexible as it had been, or as it would later become again, but she could receive Alex’s touch while lying on her back. And it wasn’t long before the fingers of Maggie’s right hand reset and she regained use of that hand, but even before that, Maggie would whisper things, tender things or loving things or direct, blissfully erotic things, into Alex’s ear while Alex used her own hands to provide the touch that Maggie couldn’t.

As they grew closer, and as Maggie healed and began to regain her strength, she convinced Alex to retreat to the second sleeping-room so they could do it more often, instead of just waiting for James and Kara to be out of the house.

Alex was surprised, and thrilled, by how nice it was to have such easy access to privacy.

Before much longer, Kara and James were spending each night in one sleeping room, and Alex and Maggie were in the other.

James got hired in a store, and Kara got hired in an office, and when they’d saved enough money, Kara sat down with Alex and told her, carefully, that they wanted to move to their own home.

Alex had smiled, and nodded, and encouraged her.

And that night, she’d sobbed silently into Maggie’s arms.

Maggie held her, that night, as they slept.

It was the first night they slept that way. When Alex woke up, she had a crick in her neck and a fear that she’d aggravated Maggie’s injuries. But Maggie said her shoulder and collarbone felt fine.

And so sleeping like that, entangled, became one of their greatest, and simplest, comforts.

Maggie found that once she’d rebuilt the basic muscles of her body, gentle sparring with Alex was her favorite form of recovery exercise.

They tried to do it in their home, once, but the neighbors complained about the noise, so they walked down the road to a grassy space -- a “park” -- and sparred there, Alex attacking and Maggie practicing her defensive rebuttals. That much was Alex’s requirement: if anyone was going to be falling in this sparring exercise routine of theirs, it was going to be her, for at least the first year. So she would never attack Maggie with enough force to risk injuring her, and if Maggie was able to retaliate with enough force to knock Alex over then, well, so much the better.

They would go every day, weather permitting, and spar one another on the grass. J’onn and James would come, too, sometimes, and spar one another at the same time.

There were no Clans in the north country, but the eight of them learned the hard way that people had other ways to hate one another. J’onn had warned James and M’gann that, for whatever reason, their dark skin and dark hair would probably make them the targets of a lot of that antagonism. And he was right: Kara told Alex that when she and James had been buying food together, a woman had walked past them and made a snide comment about how he shouldn’t be with her. And how one night, he had been walking home from a late shift when some people had yelled things at him from their vehicle.

So James would come and spar with them because he wanted to be able to keep himself safe, and J’onn sparred because he wanted to keep himself safe as well. And then, not long after, M’gann had showed up without her staff. She’d gotten a small plot of land and was farming it, half in aquaponics and half in the soil, but had had a man yell slurs at her while she was selling at a market.

The people at the market -- the other vendors, and several of the patrons -- had been upset on her behalf and had tried, in their own way, to support her. But she realized she couldn’t carry a staff everywhere to protect herself in this world, and needed to learn to use her hands alone.

So they all got together and sparred, the grass offering much softer landings than the concrete of their tower on the Bridge. And after a time -- a few days, a few weeks -- they began to gather an audience. Neighborhood teens would gather around them and watch, and sometimes children would too, or parents.

They didn’t notice the little boy who started coming every day with his mother and leaned on his crutches, his eyes glued to Maggie.

When Maggie and Alex were paused, drinking water from bottles they kept to the side, they didn’t see the boy look up at his mother. Didn’t see him ask her something, nor did they see her smile at him, and point to them, and gesture with encouragement.

But they heard the metallic clicking of his crutches as he worked his way over toward them, and they turned to look at him, confused.

Alex recovered first. She’d dealt with injured children back on the Bridge, and this couldn’t possibly be all that different.

“Hello,” she said, self-conscious of her accent and imperfect speech in this language. She crouched down to his level. “How… how you do?”

He blinked at her. “Hi,” he said. Then he looked over at Maggie and, with his crutch resting under his armpit, gestured vaguely at her legs. “You, um… you been hurt, right? I can tell ‘cuz you got a bit of a limp.”

He was young enough not to have any sense of propriety, and Alex couldn’t help but find some relief in his forthrightness. Maggie rubbed her sweaty left hand on the front of her shorts and shifted self-consciously from side to side. “Yes,” she said.

“I got hurt ‘cuz Steve at school cut the brake on my bike and I didn’t know about it. I went down the hill and couldn’t stop and crashed it and broke my leg,” he said, full of nervous, rushing words.

“That’s bad,” Alex said, wishing she had better words.

But Maggie had picked up the language more easily. “That’s awful,” she said. “Steve should not have done that. I hope he was punished.”

The boy shrugged. He blinked at them quietly through his glasses for a moment, and they blinked quietly back. Alex wasn’t sure what to make of this awkward conversation, or whether she had some kind of responsibility to end it. But Maggie was looking at him patiently, with kind eyes.

Then the boy swallowed, and squinted, and said, “The doctor says I’m gonna have a weak leg for a long time and I’m prob’ly gonna limp for awhile.”

_Oh_ , Alex thought.

“Can I--can I learn to fight like you can? ‘Cuz Steve is always picking on me and he likes to punch me and with a limp I can’t really run away that good.”

At that, Maggie grinned and crouched down to his level beside Alex. “Yeah,” she said. “When the cast is removed, come and see us. We will teach you.” She looked over and made eye contact with the boy’s mother, smiling and nodding at her.

About thirty days (“a month,” Alex reminded herself) later, the boy was back, limping, but without crutches. He said his name was Marcus. His mother was there, too. Alex took him to a bench and examined him carefully, having him move his leg in different ways to determine his limitations. In broken language, she explained her processes to his nervous, but supportive, mother.

“Are you a doctor?” his mother asked. “Or a kinesiologist? You know so much about anatomy.”

Alex shrugged. “I am… not doctor here. I was, where I lived before.”

“Where are you from?” his mother asked. “I can’t place your accent.”

Alex looked at Maggie, who shrugged, and said, “The Bridge.”

“Which bridge?” Marcus’ mother asked, furrowing her brow. “Where do people live on bridges?”

How could they begin to explain that in this language they didn’t speak well?

“The--the Bridge?” Maggie repeated, a little helplessly. “Over the… the River. South.”

But the woman just shook her head, confused.

Alex talked to Maggie about the exercises Marcus could and couldn’t do, and Maggie led him out to the grass and began modeling basic stances. With his brow furrowed in concentration, he copied her.

The next day, Marcus and his mother came back, and his mother said, “Of _course_. The _Bridge_. It didn’t even occur to me, I’m so sorry. You’re war refugees, aren’t you?”

It had been a confusing statement for Alex, full of sentence fragments and missing context, but Maggie understood, reaching for Alex’s hand to calm her.

“We’re refugees, yes,” she said. “We came here to… be safe.”

The woman smiled sadly, glancing at Alex and Maggie’s entwined fingers and then over, behind them, at where M’gann and J’onn were training on the grass. “I hope this place is kind to you,” she said. “It’s not always as safe here as some folks like to think it is.”

Marcus and his mother both had dark-colored skin, like James and J’onn and M’gann.

Marcus came every day the weather was good, Alex monitoring his progress carefully to ensure he didn’t over-exert his recovering muscles.

After a few weeks, he brought a friend: a boy named Carter he’d met in his physical therapy waiting room, who was recovering from an operation to correct a congenital problem with his hips and knees. Both of their mothers came, too. Could he join them? They asked.

Alex took him to the bench and inspected him closely, checking the strength and formation of his muscles and the integrity of his sutures, and testing his range of motion. To Carter, and to his mother, she said, “Continue with the… physical therapy… for fourteen, fifteen more days. Two -- two weeks? Two weeks. Then come back here and you can start.”

Carter looked heartbroken, but Maggie crouched down to his level. “Listen,” she said gently, “The most important rule of fighting is that fighting is only -- is only good -- if it is the -- the way to stay safe,” she said. “Fighting can protect you but it also can hurt you very much.”

Alex, again, was impressed by how well, how effectively, Maggie could choose her words in this language.

“Today,” Maggie continued, “if you fight, you will… be injure. Not be safe. But in two weeks, you will be strong. And you come here then. We will help you… make… stronger then. Okay?”

Carter still looked sad, tears threatening, but Maggie’s words also made him resolute. He set his jaw, and nodded.

Fourteen days later, exactly, he returned. His mother told them that he had worked with extra diligence on his physical therapy exercises. Alex inspected him closely, led him through a small series of movements, and confirmed that he was strong enough, now, to practice safely.

It took months before Alex and Maggie allowed either child to do anything more than work through balance exercises and practice, slowly, the gestures of certain strikes into the air.

Alex found some relief in the company of the two children. It embarrassed her to ask adults for help with words and language, but for some reason, it embarrassed her less to ask them, who seemed only to pleased to be able to teach her things as she taught them things. After a few visits, their mothers would drop them at the park and pick them up later: a gesture of trust that empowered Alex, too.

Toward the end of the season, Carter’s mother came to them again. Cat, she said her name was.

“He had a follow-up with his physical therapist and his doctor yesterday,” she said. “They said they’d never seen such strong recovery in such little time. Would you like to come to our house for supper on Friday? I wanted to talk to you about a few things.”

A whole meal in the home of someone from here, in this country? In their language? Alex blanched.

But Maggie squeezed her forearm and said, “Thank you. We would love that.”

(That Thursday, they both took more than felt comfortable from their refugee stipend to buy clothing that felt nice enough to wear at someone’s home.)

(That Friday, Alex was hardly able to eat all day, nervous as she was.)

Carter’s family’s home was enormous, larger than anything Alex thought existed outside of vids. He was overjoyed to have them in his house, grinning and showing them proudly from one room to the next. He had so many possessions, Alex thought. So many toys and baubles. So much space.

Things were so different, here.

The dinner was delicious. The family was patient with them, with Alex’s struggling with the language and Maggie’s use of only her right hand to eat.

“Listen,” Cat said afterward, as they ate sweet cakes. (“Cookies,” Carter had called them). “I had you here for a reason. Have you thought about opening a center to… do what you do with Carter and Marcus on some kind of larger scale?”

Alex and Maggie both must have looked lost, because she smiled and tried again.

“You’ve helped Carter so much,” she said. “He feels so much stronger when he goes to school. He used to get bullied for the way he walked, but the other kids don’t give him as much trouble anymore. I think it’s because he’s become so much more confident since he started working with both of you.”

Alex understood most of that and smiled, smiled, smiled.

“It’s because I could punch them!” Carter exclaimed, thrusting a fist forward, “ka-pow!”

Maggie must have given him a stern look, though, because he pulled his hand down again sheepishly. “I wouldn’t though, unless I had to protect myself. But I could. If I had to.”

“Right,” Maggie said. Under the table, she grabbed Alex’s hand, and when Alex glanced over she saw her grin.

“And then, of course, there’s how much stronger his legs have gotten,” Cat continued. “The doctor says it’s remarkable.”

“Good fighting technique works… with the body,” Alex explained, searching hard for the words she needed. “Not… against to the body. So the same movements can build strength after injury.”

“Here’s the deal,” Cat said primly, sipping from her cup of tea, “I want to invest in you.”

“In… invest?” Maggie asked.

“I’I want to give you some money to start a center where you work with kids like Marcus and Carter, and maybe adults too, to rebuild their strength after injuries or illnesses using your techniques.”

Alex blinked. She thought she’d understood that? She couldn’t have possibly, though, because it sounded like she’d said…

“We couldn’t take that much from you,” Maggie said, the awe evident in her voice.

Cat waved her hand dismissively. “I have more money than God, ladies, this would barely be a drop. And anyway, it’s not a gift. It’s an investment. If your business works out, you’ll pay me back. With a share of your profits.”

“And if it doesn’t work out?” Maggie asked.

Cat shrugged. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take. But I do have a rather brilliant mind for business. I hope you’d accept my help in getting off the ground.”

Alex was dumbstruck. She looked at Maggie, and they exchanged an hour of conversation in a minute of eye contact.

“Okay,” she said, looking back at Cat. “Yes.”

And so The Bridge: A Dojo for Misfits was born.

James joined them in the venture. They invited J’onn, too, and M’gann, but M’gann was happy growing her food, and J’onn divided his time between working with her and engaging in politics. He’d begun to write and publish columns in various areas, commenting on the outcomes of the war and the people caught in the middle. He published cautionary tales regarding the rehoming strategies for Bridge people on the land. To rehome the Bridge people safely, he said, some accounting would have to be made for the power of their Clans. For the Clans did continue to battle, and as they were migrated off the Bridge those Clan battles turned into gang wars, growing their numbers by recruiting vulnerable Land-dwelling youth.

Lillian Luthor, surrounded by her hoards of acolytes, was never convicted of any crime, though violence surrounded her for her entire life.

When the Bridge was vacated, a few of its buildings were carried off to put in museums. Jeremiah was involved in that process, so one of the building that was saved was the clinic, half-collapsed from its final standoff. A museum employee -- a “curator,” Alex learned -- contacted J’onn to learn about what had happened there. The curator travelled to visit them all, and sat with them, and recorded all of their stories, all eight of them.

When the exhibit opened at the museum in Leeside, they were all invited to go. But J’onn couldn’t go, because he would have been arrested on arrival. So, on principle alone, none of them went.

(Decades later, when he was an old man, J’onn would find out he had been pardoned. He never returned to Leeside anyway.)

The Bridge, as the Land-dwellers had promised, was demolished. Maggie had watched its collapse on a vid, her eyes hard.

Alex was never able to bring herself to watch that vid, ever, in her entire life.

 

\--

 

J’onn, eventually, moved with M’gann to her farm.

(“I never thought I’d… be able to feel this again,” he confessed to Alex one evening, as they drank tea together in her kitchen.)

(Alex smiled and said, “She’s great. She’s… worthy of you. And I think Myr’i’ah would have wanted you to love again.”)

Kara taught Lena to read, and Lena picked it up easily, and eventually qualified to become a North Country-certified doctor.

J’onn taught Winn to read, and he became an electrician who invented things in his spare time. He made Kara a new pair of lead glasses to replace the pair she’d lost in the fight on the Bridge.

And Kara.

Well.

When they arrived in this new country, she decided to be just Kara again; Cat hired her out of her first job to work as her assistant. She tried for a year, for two years, to be just Kara Danvers, who worked for Cat every day and went home to James every night and kept a small, comfortable house on the edge of town and drew no attention.

She let abuse, and violence, and accidents happen all around her, because normal people didn’t interfere with those things.

But then Alex had boarded a plane to travel to Leeside to visit Jeremiah.

And that plane had suffered an engine failure shortly after take-off, and lost its balance and began to hurtle back to the ground.

How could Kara let that happen?

And so she’d left normal-Kara behind that day, catching the plane and landing it safely.

It marked the beginning of a dual life: Kara Danvers, who worked for Cat and came home to James and was otherwise unremarkable.

And the nameless blonde superhero who performed daring rescues of innocents in danger.

She was recognized, of course, as the byproduct of wartime genetic engineering and supersoldier development projects. The lab that claimed to have created her went so far as to release the name she’d had as a child, before the death of her birth-parents. But it was but one of a hundred different conspiracy theories regarding the mystery woman, a tree lost in the forest.

For the rest of Kara’s life, only the few people closest to her knew of her dual identities.

 

\--

 

Maggie limped for the rest of her life, and had a weak left hand for the rest of her life, but Alex walked alongside her for the rest of her life, anyway.

And now, older, with salt-and-pepper hair, Maggie looked at Alex and smiled.

“This might be the last year for this,” she said.

“You said that last year,” Alex said. “And the year before that. And I bet you’ll say it next year, too.”

The sun was rising on the anniversary of their departure from the Bridge. It was a bit of a fictional anniversary: they didn’t know exactly what day, by the land-dwellers’ calendars, they had started their trip. But it was about this time of year, so they celebrated it every year on this date. And this was the nature of their celebration:

They would get up early in the home they’d shared since they’d moved out of their refugee apartment. Alex was never able to get used to having much space, and Maggie liked to be close to Alex, so they bought a home of just two rooms: a living space for eating, sleeping, and resting, and a bathroom. For years, they shared a bed that the store had said was only big enough for one person, but was still larger than anything they could have imagined sharing on the Bridge. Their home, too, was supposed to only be big enough for one young person, but it was more space than either of them had ever had to themselves before. When they got older and more prone to stiffness, they upgraded to a slightly larger bed, but spent most nights close to one another in the middle of it.

Page 53 of Maggie’s book, dirty and faded and marked up, hung over their table, mounted under glass.

The morning of the anniversary, they’d get up from their bed, make a breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, and pick up their bags and start walking.

Maggie’s weak left hand rested in Alex’s right. Each of them had a bag slung over their outside shoulder. The ground rose, gradually, beneath them, and at its highest point, they paused and looked down at the water below.

This bridge was not as high as their Bridge had been. But they were older, now. The shorter climb suited them.

Alex looked at Maggie. Her face, over the years, had become much more lined with the marks of happiness than of sadness and suffering. She had crows’ feet from where her cheeks pushed up into her eyes when she smiled, and her dimples had parentheses that echoed out toward her ears.

The rising sun, now, reflected off the water below, making her eyes glisten.

“You ready?” Alex asked.

“Born ready,” Maggie answered.

They crouched down together and pulled the ropes and harnesses out of their bags. The belay devices that Winn had reverse-engineered them. The harness that J’onn had made, and the one M'gann had given them, carefully tended and patched over the years. The rope that they’d replaced every time it wore out.

They’d told the curator about the tradition of dropping for water, and he’d come and watched Maggie do it, once, when they were still new to the Land.

But now, nobody but the occasional vehicle zipped past them as they began to harness up and tie in.

Side by side, they swung their legs over the railing and dropped the long end of the rope into the water, hearing it splash below them.

“Okay?” Alex said.

Maggie just grinned wider and reached over, grabbing Alex’s sleeve to tug her closer. Alex swung, a pendulum in the harness with her feet on the ledge, and their lips met in the middle in a quick, giddy kiss.

“Okay,” Maggie said, once they’d settled back into place, side by side. Her eyes locked on Alex’s and she counted down: “Three... two... one... go!”

Together, they pushed off, hurtling from the ledge toward the water below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That is, quite literally, all she wrote.
> 
> I have a bunch of comments to reply to, and I'll get to all of them. Several of you have commented on every chapter, or almost every chapter, and I just... can't tell you how much it has meant. I wrote this because the idea wouldn't leave me alone, and it had to be freed from my head somehow. Finding that so many of you were as captured by it as I was has been just... unbelievably gratifying. I've never had such an amazing response to anything I've written, fic or original. So thanks to all of you who have stuck around and who have taken the time to let me know you were reading. You guys have turned bad days into good ones for me, over and over again.


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